
APPLICATIONS OF BACTERIOLOGY IN EUROPE. 71 
bottles, which are owned by the dealer, which are washed and 
sterilized by him, and which are filled and sealed in the central 
milk-distributing station. The advantages of this method are 
very great and its expense is apparently so slight that it is be- 
ing adopted more and more widely by the milk supply com- 
panies. ‘The bottles in question can be much more carefully 
washed in the factory than in the homes of the consumer, since 
they can be thoroughly sterilized by heat with very little 
trouble, and the milk which is placed in such bottles and sealed 
at the factory is certain to have the best possible chance of 
keeping. When the dairyman is obliged to depend upon the 
thoroughness of the washing of the milk vessels on the part of 
the consumer, he has learned by experience that great trouble 
arises from the lack of care in the individual houses. A large 
part of this source of trouble is removed by the use of glass 
bottles sealed by the dealer, and for this reason, if for no other, 
the use of such a method of distributing milk is rapidly ex- 
tending. It is claimed by some companies that the expense is 
actually less than the older method of distributing milk.- The 
milk can be bottled mechanically in the factory by a grade of 
help that can be obtained at wages considerably less than must 
be paid to employes who are obliged to travel with the dis- 
tributing cart and measure out the milk to each customer, and, 
alter being thus bottled, the distribution can again be carried 
out more rapidly and with a cheaper grade of ‘help than in the 
older method. The saving of expense in this way is nearly 
enough to compensate for the cost of the bottles and their 
sterilization and the breakage which occurs in thé process. 
Judging from the tendency of dairying at the present day, 
this method of handling milk is sure to increase and perhaps 
become almost universal in the course of time. 
The fact that a considerable portion of the contaminating 
bacteria which produce troublesome changes in milk comes 
from dirt of various kinds which get into the milk during or 
after the milking, has led to the quite general adoption of new 
and more careful methods of cleaning the milk. This is done 
in some places by simply filtering through sand, large filters 
being used made of alternate layers of carefully cleaned 
angular grains of sand and cotton, and through these the milk 
passes with considerable rapidity. During its passage all of 
the particles of dirt of any considerable size are removed, and 
the keeping properties of the milk are quite noticeably in- 
creased. Such filtering does not indeed remove the bacteria 
