58 STORRS AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 
MYCOLOGY. 
The constant appearance of mold in or upon soft cheeses such 
as Roquefort, Camembert, and Brie, has been referred to al- 
ready. ‘The works of Epstein and Roger already discussed 
give two views of their relation to the production of cheese. 
Epstein believes the mold entirely unnecessary in the produc- 
tion of Camembert, but notes its presence and important function 
in the ripening of Brie. Roger, on the contrary, believes the 
mold to be really essential in the ripening of Camembert. Other 
investigations published, record the constant appearance of mold 
upon Brie, but give little or no information with reference to 
Camembert. Popular descriptions of Camembert cheese fac- 
tories, however, describe the constant presence of a special mold 
in the ripening cellars. The references to molds in the litera- 
ture of the subject and their constant presence upon the cheeses, 
fixed for us a series of questions. What molds are associated 
with Camembert cheese as found in the market? Which, if 
any of these, are essential to its proper ripening? Exactly 
what changes-in the ripening process result from fungous ac- 
tivity? What molds are deleterious and what is their action? 
With these questions in mind we first made a cultural study 
of the floral of the Camembert cheeses found in the Ameri- 
can market. In this about twenty molds were soon found, 
isolated in pure cultures and described. A more careful study 
of our cultures with a comparative examination of the surfaces 
of the different kinds of cheese showed that only a few of these 
molds were really common, while but two of them were always 
present. 
With the organism once in pure cultures we next undertook 
to determine what relation, if any, each might bear to the rip- 
ening process. Since it is practically impossible to make cheeses 
entirely free from other molds, or bacteria, or both, without 
changing its chemical nature, some controlled means had to be 
devised to study the various agents of ripening and the steps 
of the process. We found it necessary to limit this compara- 
tive study to the effects of a small group of molds. These 
were grown in pure culture under known conditions upon 
milk, casein, curd, cheeses, and special media in order to deter- 
mine separately different phases of the physiological action of 
the molds. For this study we used 1, the one we shall call the 
