264 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Szpr., 1899. 
After an attack of this kind, the animal should receive special care until 
digestion is completely restored. 
INFLAMMATION OF THE KIDNEYS OR NEPHRITIS. 
Badly wintered ewes are apt to give birth to lambs predisposed to the 
above disease, and such youngsters die off in two or three weeks. No measures 
of a remedial character are of any avail, and the subject is merely referred to 
here as a warning. 
WOOL BALLS. 
These occur for want of clatting at the proper time, or else from the lambs 
biting at ticks or scab. Anautumn dip is seldom money wasted. The symptoms 
are dulness, giddiness, loss of appetite, collapse, and death; and remedies are not 
often of much avail. True, it is sometimes found that repeated doses of oil 
dislodge the balls, and it may be worth a trial, but prevention is comparatively 
easy, and at all times better than cure.—‘“Vet.,” in Farmer and Stockbreeder. 
ESTIMATING ACIDIVY IN MILK. 
By C. W. TISDALE DAVIES, F.C.8 
THE HOT IRON TEST. 
Tuts test—originally American, I believe, and very accurate sometimes—is not 
based on any well-defined principle, but, being simply conducted, and usable by 
novices at the work, has a large circle of admirers and adherents. ‘The iron to 
be used—or, better, steel—is about 14-inches wide and 23-inch in thickness, length 
being some 6 inches, set in a wooden handle. It is heated in the fire to red heat, 
and allowed to cool just enough so that the redness disappears, and it looks 
black. Of the curd, which is at this time maturing on the cooler preparatory to 
the grinding process, a little block is taken of about 1 inch square, and squeezed 
in the hand to free from as much moisture as possible; it is then introduced to 
the face of the hot iron, to which it sticks, and the iron is moved gently away, 
when fine strings of curd will be noticed. 
The cheesemaker judges the amount of acidity present by the length of 
the curd strings. For instance, curd ready for grinding in the Cheddar process 
will produce strings of from 1 inch to 14 inches in length. If the strings are not 
long enough, the curd is covered up again and left to further acidify. Attention 
should be paid to the kind of strings the curd produces. They must be 
extremely fine and thread-like, and not thick and elastic, which latter do not 
indicate anything in particular. 
Professor Babcock has experimented with the hot iron test, and found that 
no definite relatien exists between it and acidity, although it may be generally 
taken that long strings are associated with high acid. To prove this, he has 
shown that sweet curd which will not string at all can be made—by pouring over 
it some alkali, such as borax, phosphate of soda, or bicarbonate of soda—to string 
as if it were highly acid. In fact, the hot iron test is one which is suitable to 
indicate maturity of curd, inasmuch as any substance— lactic acid, alkalis, &e.— 
which has a slightly solvent action upon it, causes it to string. 
It must, therefore, be understood that, although lactic acids assists stringing, 
there are other causes at work, and that mature curd which strings properly is 
conditioned by the peptonising or digestive action of other ferments in addition 
to what the lactic acid has done to help. 
THE ACIDIMETER. 
The next test, and the best of all—being, as it is, absolutely accurate, and 
now commonly known as the acidimeter—depends on the simple chemical means 
of titrating an acid solution with an alkali, or vice versd, to determine (yolu- 
metrically) the percentage of one in a given solution. Now, although this 
