296 Report on the Dairy-Farming of the North-west of France. 
Fig. 3, — Hailway-van, loaded with two tiers of Milk-cans. 
h lit feel 
ment— or by water pumped from a deep well, as at Villeneuve- 
la-Gujard, near Montereau. The evening's milk is delivered 
between 5 and 7 o'clock, is cooled and mixed with the morning's 
milk, and the whole arrives in Paris early the next morning. 
It is said that this mixture has a slightly nutty flavour, which 
causes it to be preferred to ordinary new milk. 
At M. Lecomte's establishment near Melun, there is one of 
M. Raoul-Pictet's freezing-machines, which enables him to 
reduce rapidly to freezing-point a large quantity of milk every 
evening. The remainder of the mixture of morning's and 
evening's milk that cannot be refrigerated is placed in cans in a 
bath fed by a running stream, which keeps it at about 50° Fahr. 
Before the milk is sent out, the two lots are mixed together, 
and the whole is thus reduced to about 45° Fahr. The cost of 
the freezing-machine, including steam engine, pump, aspirator, 
tanks, and everything complete, was between 1600/. and 1700/. 
The retail price of milk in Paris varies with the season, but 
is generally about 14rf. per gallon. When the lucerne gets 
frost-bitten the price rises suddenly to the winter level, because 
the cows must then be put upon their winter diet and therefore 
give less milk ; while, on the other hand, it appears that more milk 
is consumed in Paris in cold weather than in the summer, when 
fruit enters so largely into the dietary of the French people. A 
wholesale and even a retail milk-merchant must therefore" have 
some outlet for his surplus stock, and many retail milkmen 
make butter or a special kind of cheese with it. M. Lecomte 
has, at Villeneuve-la-Guyard, a large Norman churn, with which 
he makes butter on the Isigny plan (see p. 298). It is worked by 
a two-horse Tangye's engine, the churn being set to sixty revo- 
lutions per minute. Butter is only made when he considers 
that it will pay better than Gruyere cheese, of which he can 
make at that establishment 20 every day. 
