478 
Wisconsin state Agricultural society. 
it, require the eye and the mind of the trained scientist, great pa¬ 
tience, long experience, and a peculiar aptitude for the work. It 
is one thing to look through a microscope, but quite another thing 
to be able to designate correctly what one sees. Hence the ob¬ 
servation of the mere tyro must be taken with due caution. 
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Our best cheese as now made is, in all its essential principles, 
the same as that originated in Somersetshire, and which has been 
in practice for more than a hundred years at the foot of the Mendiss 
Hills. All theories in vogue from time to time diverging from 
their principles have ultimately proved failures. 
You will say that we have been improving the character of 
American cheese for the last ten years or more, or that it never 
suited the English market so well as now. I grant it, but it is be¬ 
cause we have come nearer and nearer the true “chedder method” 
which was first made known to our dairymen at their convention in 
1865. I do not now refer to appliances for abridging labor—then 
of course an original American invention, but I have yet to be 
shown a single original scientific principle that has been discovered 
and adopted by which our cheese manufacture has been improved 
above the old chedder method. 
The lesson which our dairymen are learning to-day is, that there 
is a difference between speculative theories and sound practice. 
We have learned the reason for many dairy operations and these 
have been so well expounded from time to time that our cheese 
makers have become better grounded in the science of the dairy, 
and are more intelligent than the great mass of practical dairymen 
in Europe. 
But there are some things concerning the care and preservation 
of milk that may be placed to our credit. The cooling and aera¬ 
tion of milk for its better flavor and condition is ours. Mr. Foster, 
of Oneida, N. Y., was the first to discover that the odor of putrify- 
ing animal matter, like that of a dead horse, may taint the milk in 
the bag by being breathed by the cow while at pasture. The mi¬ 
croscopical investigations of Prof. Law, of Cornell, were the first 
to show how vegetable organisms may be transmitted to the milk 
from the water which cows drink to slake thirst. Mr. Truman, of 
Chenango county, was the first to discover that other fat than ob¬ 
tained from the milk may be substituted for it in cheese. The late 
Gail Borden, of White Plains, N. Y., was the first to show how 
