34 
Comjiosition of Cheese. 
tliat it is bad policy to keep more cows than can be liberally 
supplied with food. The evening's milk on the 6th of September, 
it will be noticed, contained about i per cent, more water and 
somewhat less casein and butter than the morning's milk of the 
same cows on the same day. From this and other instances 
some may be disposed to infer that the morning's milk is gone- 
rally richer than the evening milk — a view which 1 myself was 
disposed to adopt until a larger range of experiments proved to 
me its inaccuracy. In truth, the comparatively greater richness 
of the morning or the evening milk depends on a variety of cir- 
cumstances so complicated as to require a lengthened discussion^ 
which I must postpone to a future paper. 
The remarkably small quantity of butter in the milk of the 
Gth of September appears very striking Avhen contrasted with the 
proportion of butter found in good milk, and still more so when 
compared with the unusually large quantity contained in the 
rich milk analysed on the 21st of October, This milk, like that 
of the Gth of September, was produced by cows out in grass, 
without any additional food rich in fat, such as linseed or rape- 
cake, and yet it contained nearly four times as much butter as 
that of the cows kept on an insufficient quantity of poor grass. 
The beneficial influence of abundance of good pasture on the 
butter-yielding qualities of milk, and the contrary effect of a 
stinted supply of grass, are seen in bold relief in the first and 
the sixth analyses. 
Whilst the proportion of butter in different samples of milk 
varies exceedingly the relative amounts of curd or casein, of 
milk-sugar and of ash, though liable to certain fluctu,ations, do 
not greatly difler in good, indifferent, or even very poor milk. 
It would thus appear that the quantity and quality of food, and 
other varying circumstances which affect the composition of 
milk, exert their influence principally on the proportion of butter. 
And as this is certainly the most valuable constituent of cheese, 
and 1 lb. of butter suffices for about 2 lbs. of saleable cheese, we 
can readily understand that in one dairy a considerable quantity 
of cream may be taken off the milk, and yet a better quality and 
a greater quantity of cheese can be made than in another dairy, 
from the same quantity of milk, from which no cream has been 
removed. 
The second analysis exhibits nearly 5 per cent, of butter, a 
proportion which is decidedly above the average. This analysis 
has been selected as an example illustrating the increasing rich- 
ness of milk in the fall of the year. Practical cheese-makers are 
w^ell acquainted with the fact, that in autumn, when green food 
becomes scarcer, the quantity of milk diminishes considerably, 
but that the weight of cheese which can then be made from a 
