316 Report on the Dairy-Farming of the North-west of France. 
Camembert. Here it is turned at frequent intervals and, after a 
lapse of a week or ten days, it is tightly bound by winding 
round its rim strips of the leaf of the reed-mace ( Typha latifolia), 
the object being to prevent the bursting of the cheese by the 
fermentation which is now going on inside it. After another 
six weeks, or two months, or longer, when the cheese has ac- 
quired the bright red colour which is thought characteristic of 
a good Livarot, it is sold for consumption. In the event of this 
colour not coming naturally to a proper hue, many curers do 
not hesitate to paint the cheese with annatto. 
The size and the quality (richness) of Livarot cheeses vary so 
much that it is difficult to give a mean price for them, but the 
richer cheeses are smaller and mature sooner than the poorer 
qualities. The price of good cheeses may be put at from 1 franc 
to 1 shilling each, retail, except in Lent, when they are much 
dearer, on account of the greater demand for them during that 
fast. As to the return to the makers, M. Pouriau puts the 7iet 
amount from butter and from this kind of cheese at from 10/. 
to 12/. on the average, rising to 14/. in exceptionally well- 
managed dairies ; and he quotes a dairy where the y7vss return 
per cow is between 221. and 24?. per annum. 
Gruyere. — Of all foreign kinds of cheese, the Gruyere is 
probably the best known to English travellers at home and 
abroad, as it can generally be obtained at the best hotels both in 
London and the provinces. The familiarity of the consumer 
with the product is not, however, accompanied by an exact 
knowledge of the process of its manufacture ; and I have heard 
the most amusing descriptions given by people who assumed 
the air of being well informed on such subjects. As an illustra- 
tion of the prevailing ignorance, I may quote the following 
description of Gruyere from one of the favourite text-books still 
used in the elementary private schools : — " Gruyere, made in 
a small town of Switzerland, in the canton of Friburg. It is a 
mixture of goats' and ewes' milk, and very strong in flavour"! 
In France alone the value of the Gruyere cheese made 
annually is estimated at more than 600,000/. Owing to differ- 
ences in the physical and economical conditions of the districts 
in which it is manufactured, there are many variations in the 
size and quality of the cheese, as well as in the arrangements 
under which it is made, cured, and marketed. It would require 
a lengthy treatise to enter into all these details, and I therefore 
propose to confine myself to a brief description of the making 
of the cheese, as I saw it done at M. Lecomte's factory, near 
Montereau, about 50 miles south of Paris. 
Gruyere cheeses have a sort of cart-wheel shape, that is to 
say, they are thin cylinders of large diameter. In weight they 
