Report on the Dairy-Farviing of the North-west of France. 313 
the season, being' turned upside down after an interval of 12 to 
24 hours, that is to say, when sufficiently drained at the bottom. 
After the turning, the face of the cheese that is then inside the 
moulds is sprinkled with salt, and about 12 hours afterwards the 
opposite face and the rim of the cheese are also salted. The 
cheeses are then placed on movable shelves round the walls of 
the dairy for a day or two, according to the season and to the 
capacity of the room in relation to the number of cheeses made 
daily ; and thus ends the first stage in the manufacture of 
this renowned dairy product. It must be understood, however, 
that the above descrij)tion is merely general, and that each 
maker knows by experience how much rennet of an ascertained 
strength he should add to the milk, how long the curd takes, 
under different circumstances of weather, to become fit for 
putting into the moulds, how large the perforations in the 
moulds should be, how long the cheeses should be left to drain 
in the moulds, how often they should be turned, how much salt 
should be used, and so on through the whole of the processes 
which constitute the manufacture and the curing of the cheese. 
The curing of Camembert cheese consists of two distinct 
stages. In the first stage, the cheeses are placed in a thoroughly 
well ventilated room (" drying room "), on shelves made of 
narrow strips of wood, having narrow intervals between them, 
or of ordinary planks, covered with reed mats or clean rye-straw. 
The great point is to secure as dry an atmosphere and as equable 
a temperature as possible, and the greatest ingenuity is exercised 
in efforts to attain these objects. Generally the windows are 
numerous and small, placed at different heights, and furnished 
with three fittings, viz., with glass, to exclude air, but not light, 
when the glass is shut ; with a wooden shutter, to enable both 
light and air to be excluded ; and with a wire-gauze fitting, 
which will admit both light and air, but will exclude flies and 
all kinds of winged insects, which are the great bane of the 
curer of soft cheese. The cheeses, as a rule, are turned every 
day at the commencement of their curing, and every other day 
afterwards while they are in the drying room, except in damp 
weather, when daily turning is absolutely necessary. During 
the sojourn in the drying room the cheeses show the following 
succession of appearances : — After an interval of three or four 
days they become speckled, in another week they are covered 
with a thick crop of white mould ; by degrees the colour of this 
mould deepens to a dark yellow, while the outside of the cheese 
becomes less and less sticky. At the end of about a month, 
when the cheese no longer sticks to the fingers, it is taken to the 
finishing room, where light is nearly excluded, and where the 
atmosphere is kept very still and slightly damp. Here they 
