CHESHIRE CHEESE, 
:10R 
sent season, on a fine shrub, nine feet high, and its 
blossoms expanding during the first warm daysin Feb¬ 
ruary, yield a delicious perfume when most in requi¬ 
sition. The Nandinn domestica, Photinia serrulata, 
English and Portuguese laurels. Arbutus unedo and 
andrachne, and the varieties of the magnolia grandi- 
flora, I protect slightly in winter by a simple board 
frame. I am gratified to tell you that the Pkolinia 
arbutifolia, and the splendid and unique family of 
the Mdkonias , as well as all the splendid species of 
the honicera and Ribes families from Oregon, with¬ 
stand our severe winters, and are flourishing in my 
grounds with extreme luxuriance. This result is pe¬ 
culiarly gratifying, as the climate of that remote and 
interesting portion of our country is so much more 
mild than our own. These beautiful shrubs would 
however speedily perish if they were subjected to the 
extreme rigor of such a vVinter climate as Sir Francis 
Drake has portrayed as that of Oregon. There could 
be no test more decisive as to the verity of his state¬ 
ment of having visited that coast, than could be fur¬ 
nished by a botanical committee, based on the relative 
hardihood of its vegetable productions, and their deci¬ 
sion would possess this great advantage, that in such 
a test the botanists of all nations would perfectly ac¬ 
cord. 
Wm. R. Prince. 
Prince’s Linncean Botamc Garden fy Nurseries, ) 
Flushing , July 25, 1845. j, 
CHE SHIRE CHEE SE. 
The last journal of the English Agricultural Soci¬ 
ety contains a prize essay, by Mr. White of Warring¬ 
ton, on making cheese in Cheshire. As we have not 
room in our pages for the whole article, we condense 
and extract from it. 
Time when cheese wasfirst made in Cheshire. —The 
fame of the cheeses of Cheshire is of very ancient date : 
at least as old as the reign of Henry 1. (a.b. 1100). 
The Countess Constance of Chester, though the wife 
of Hugh Lupus, the king’s first cousin, kept a herd of 
kine, and made good cheeses, three of which she pre¬ 
sented to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Giraldus 
Cambrensis bears honorable testimony to the excel¬ 
lence of the Cheshire cheeses of the day. 
Quantity made in the County. —There cannot be 
less, upon a moderate calculation, than 12,000 tons 
made in that county annually; a considerable portion 
of which is of excellent quality. 
Art of Cheese-making. —The art of cheese-making 
consists in the complete extraction of the whey and 
in the proper compacting and curing of the curd. The 
richness of the cheese depends upon the quality of 
the milk, or, in other words, on the proportion of 
cream which the milk contains. The cheese of Che¬ 
shire is professedly made from new milk, or milk 
from which no cream has been taken. It is, however, 
well known, that in many dairies, in the morning be¬ 
fore cheese-making, a small quantity of cream is 
skimmed off the previous evening’s milk; this cream 
is either churned by itself, or mixed with whey-cream, 
by which there is obtained abetter quality and greater 
quantity of (so called) whey-butter. It may appear 
singular to some, that any portion of cream should be 
found in whey, but such is the fact, and the means 
used in Cheshire for extracting it are very simple. 
Making of Butter from Whey- cream. —This varies 
very little from the process of making butter from the 
cream of milk. The cream is kept for three or four 
days, or until it has become clotted (provincially 
termed calved). Those who make the best whey 
butter have a spigot and faucet to each of their cream- 
mugs to iet off the whey, which in the course of a 
few hours settles at the bottom, and which, if allow 
ed to remain, imparts a rank flavor to the cream, an^ 
consequently to the butter. The temperature of th 
cream, when put into the churn, is generally ascer¬ 
tained by the hand ; but if a thermometer be used, the 
heat which I would recommend is 60°, having found 
that the best. If it be much higher than this, the but¬ 
ter may be expected not only to be soft, but inferior 
both in quantity and quality ; and if much lower, the 
operation of churning will be prolonged, and indeed 
tedious. At this heat the time in churning will pro¬ 
bably be about an hour and a half. It will perhaps 
be necessary in cold weather to put hot water into the 
churn, and in warm weather to put in cold water, in 
order to attain this desirable object as to heat. From 
100 gallons of milk there will not be less than of 
whey, which should yield from 10 to 12 gallons of 
cream, or 34 to 4 lbs. of butter. The quantity of whey- 
butter per cow is about half a pound per week, taking 
the season through; but with that small portion of 
cream of the evening’s milk added, the farmer often 
churns as much as three quarters of a pound of butter 
per cow per week, or from 20 to 25 lbs. per annum: 
1 lb. of salt is sufficient for curing 37 lbs. of butter, if 
for present use. 
Number of Cows kept , and Produce. —The number 
of cows kept for the purpose of a cheese dairy is sel¬ 
dom less than 8 or 10, or more than 70 or 80; and is 
of course regulated by the size of the farm—these 
average about 90 or 100 statute acres, upon .each of 
which about 15 or 18 cows are kept. From 18 cows, 
a cheese of from 36 lbs. to 54 lbs. weight is made 
daily during four or five months of the summer. The 
annual produce of cheese per cow depends both upon 
the quality of the animal (with the mode of keeping 
her) and of the land, or rather the herbage. I have 
known many farmers sustain great loss by not feed¬ 
ing their cattle sufficiently well in winter. With ju¬ 
dicious management, about 3 cwt. of cheese (of 
112 lbs.) may be considered as the average amount 
made per annum upon land let for 30s. a statute acre ; 
but in a few instances 5 cwt. per cow, and even more, 
is sometimes made. This can only be from a small 
and choice stock 
Blilking. —This operation commences about five 
o’clock in the morning, and five or six in the evening. 
In this county it is the practice for most of the ser¬ 
vants, both men and maids, to assist, and for the cows 
to be milked in the cowhouses (called here “ skip- 
pons”) all the year round. When, as is usual, there 
is one milker for six or seven cows, the milking sel¬ 
dom exceeds an hour and a quarter. The milk of 
new-calved cows is not mixed with the other until 
about four or five days after calving. 
Offices and Utensils. —As the evening’s milk is sel¬ 
dom made into cheese until the following morning, 
and sometimes in small dairies (where four “ meals” 
are used) not until the second morning, a cool “ milk- 
house ” is necessary ; on which account it usually oc¬ 
cupies that side of the farm-house least exposed to the 
sun. The utensils in which the milk is kept are 
usually portable shallow earthenware vessels called 
“ pan-mugs,” and in same dairies leaden or zinc cool- 
