CHEESH-RACK. 
A fourth kind of cheese-press consists of a 
frame of cast-iron ; a fixed iron-plate for receiving 
and retaining the cheese-vat ; a moveable iron- 
plate for pressing upon the sinker of the cheese- 
vat; a perpendicular piston fixed into the move- 
able plate, and provided over its middle and 
upper part with a rack; a pinion and ratchet- 
wheel, for working in the rack, and elevating or 
lowering the piston; a malleable iron lever, three 
feet in length, and grooved in several places on 
the upper side, to hold the ring of the weight, 
and to lessen or augment the power of the ma- 
- chine in the proportion of the weight’s distance 
from the ratchet-wheel; and a winch-handle, on 
the side opposite to the iron lever, to turn the 
axis of the pinion, and apply the whole power of 
the machine. This press—of which, as made by 
the Shott’s Iron Company, a drawing is given in 
Plate XV., Fig. 8—is exceedingly effective, and 
possesses the advantage of giving any amount of 
pressure which may be required, and of applying 
this either quickly and easily, or slowly and more 
powerfully to suit the conclusion of the operation. 
A fifth kind of cheese-press is known by the 
epithet pneumatic, and was invented in 1833 by 
Sir John Robison. “ This,” says the brief no- 
tice of it in the Catalogue of the Highland So- 
ciety’s Museum, “ is an ingenious and successful 
application of science to a homely process. The 
curd, which is to be freed of its whey, is put into 
the form upon a permeable bottom. The air- 
pump is then worked to produce a partial vacuum 
in the receiver, when the atmospherical pressure, 
acting on the curd, exerts a gentle and uniform 
force, which causes the whey to descend into the 
recipient below. Cheese prepared by this pro- 
cess is found to be superior to any made in the 
common way.”—Doyle’s Husbandry.—Low’s Ele- 
ments of Agriculture—Transactions of the High- 
land Society.—Catalogue of the Highland Society's 
Museum.—The Quarterly Journal of Agriculture. 
CHEESE-RACK. A swing-frame for drying 
and turning cheeses. See the article Cunnsz. 
CHEESE-RENNET. See Bepstraw and Ren- 
NET. 
CHEESE-VAT, or Curssen. The vessel for 
containing the prepared curd during the process 
of its compression into cheese in the cheese-press. 
Its size and form necessarily vary according to 
the desired size and form of the cheese. The 
common cheese-vat is a very strong miniature 
tub, with little or no interior taper, built in 
staves of elm, and very strongly hooped. Its 
bottom is thick, and is pierced with holes to per- 
mit the escape of the expressed whey; and its 
top is exactly fitted with a strong, cross-doubled, 
wooden cover. The cheese-vat commonly used 
in Cheshire and some other districts, is made of 
tin. 
CHEIMATOBIA. See Mors. 
CHEIRANTHUS. See Wattriower. 
CHEIROSTEMON. An interesting and beau- 
tiful tropical tree, of the bombax tribe. 
I. 
It con- 
stitutes a genus of itself, and takes for its speci- 
fic designation platanoides. Its generic name 
alludes to the resemblance of its stamens to the 
human hand; and its specific name alludes to 
the similarity of its growth and appearance to 
those of the plane-tree. Its popular name, so far 
as it has one, alludes also to the form of its sta- 
mens, and, in the language of its native country, 
signifies ‘the hand-tree.’ Its full-grown stem 
is about the thickness of a man’s body, and about 
the height of 30 feet ; its branches are numerous, 
close, and horizontal, constitute in the aggregate 
an imposing compact head, and are beset, toward 
their extremity, with a profusion of short, fawn- 
coloured hairs; its leaves are cordate, serrated, 
slightly seven-lobed, richly green above, fawn-col- 
ouredly hairy below, and six or eight inches long; 
its flowers appear at the ends of the branches, 
and, though apetalous, have a large, bright red, 
fleshy, angular, five-lobed, campanulate calyx, 
and a very curious and imposing set of stamens, 
forming combinedly a column, and forking at the 
top into five processes similarly disposed to the 
parted and curved fingers of the human hand; 
and its fruit is a large, five-celled, woody capsule, 
containing in each cell from 15 to 20 seeds. A 
single tree of Cheirostemon, near the town of 
Toluca in Mexico, has long been held in super- 
stitious veneration by the Mexicans, and, till of 
late, was generally believed by them to be the 
only individual of its species in existence, and 
appears to be much older than the date of the 
conquest of America. But the plant was propa- 
gated from cuttings in the Botanic Garden of 
Mexico in 1801; it was introduced to Britain 
from New Spain in 1820; it has now become not 
uncommon in our hothouse collections; and it is 
known to grow abundantly in the native forests 
of Guatemala. 
CHELIDONIUM. See Cenanpine. 
CHELONE. A genus of very beautiful her- 
baceous plants, of the figwort tribe. Six species, 
all perennial-rooted, and five of them quite 
hardy, have been introduced to Britain from 
various parts of North America ; and one of them 
grows to the height of about 7 feet, and each of 
the others to the height of about 4 feet. The 
smooth species, Chelone glabra, though far from 
being the prettiest, is the longest and best known, 
and was introduced in 1730. Its root is decur- 
rent and thick-jointed ; its stems are smooth and 
channelled ; its leaves are produced in sessile and 
opposite pairs at the joints, and are 35 inches 
long, and about three-quarters of an inch broad 
at the base, and diminish gradually in breadth 
from the base to a point at the top; its flowers 
are white, monopetalous, tubular, very similar in 
shape to the flowers of foxglove, and appear from 
-| August till October; and its fruit is an oval cap- 
sule, full of white, roundish, compressed seeds. 
The colours of the flowers of the other species are 
purple, scarlet, pale red, and combinations of 
scarlet and orange. Hight or nine species of the 
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