272 On Cheese-making in Home Dairies and in Factories. 
account of the modes of cheese-manufacture in our principal 
dairy districts, if only as an illustration of the fitness of the 
factory system to the manufacture of cheese on any of the several 
methods. 
Cheese-making in Home Dairies. 
(1.) The Cheddar System. — This I will describe as it is 
carried on at Marksbury, upon the farm of one of the best makers 
in England. Mr. Harding, of Marksbury, is already known to 
readers of this Journal (see vol. xxi.), and he is also well known 
to cheese-makers in Ayrshire and other counties and districts 
which he and Mrs. Harding have visited on the invitation of 
Agricultural Societies and others, for the purpose of giving in- 
struction in the manufacture of this kind of cheese. Mr. Harding 
is now disabled by illness, but he took great interest in the 
object of my visit to Marksbury last October, when I witnessed 
the process of cheese-making on his farm, and learned from Mrs. 
Harding and her son-in-law, who is now associated with them 
in the tenancy of the farm, the full details of their mode of 
cheese-making. 
The morning's and evening's milk are together brought to a 
temperature of 80^, more or less, according to the temperature of 
the night. If that has been warm, a temperature of 78° w^l 
give as great effectiveness to a given quantity of rennet as one 
of 82° or 84° in cases where the milk has been at a lower tem- 
perature for some hours of a cold night. The evening's milk, 
having been placed in several vessels during the night to cool, 
and being stirred at intervals during the evening, is skimmed, 
and the cream, with a portion of the milk, is heated up to 100° 
by floating it in tin vessels on the boiler, and the whole of it 
is poured into the tub — into which the morning's milk is being 
also strained, through a proper sieve, as it arrives — so as to 
raise the whole, as I have said, to from 78° to 82° Falir. The 
rennet, made from two or three dozen veils, in as many quarts 
of salt water, and allowed to stand three weeks, is added — 
half a pint to 100 gallons — and the curd sets in about an hour. 
The small veils of Irish calves, which are killed at a week old, 
are preferred, and they should bo 18 months old before use. 
The curd is cut with a single long blade to and fro throughout 
its depth, in lines forming a 4-inch mesh upon the surface, and 
the whole mass is gently turned over from the bottom with skim- 
ming-dish and hand. The whole is then again worked through- 
out with a 'shovel breaker' — a four-fmgered paddle, with wires 
across the fingers — great care being taken to do it gently, so that 
