a sort of food prepared of curdled milk purged from the serum or whey, and afterwards dried for use.

Cheese differs in quality according as it is made from new or skimmed milk, from the curd which separates spontaneously upon standing, or that which is more speedily produced by the addition of rennet. Cream also affords a kind of cheese, but quite fat and butteraceous, and which does not keep long. Analyzed chemically, cheese appears to partake much more of an animal nature than butter, or the milk from which it was made. It is insoluble in every liquid except spirit of nitre, and caustic alkaline ley. Shaved thin, and properly treated with hot water, it forms a very strong cement if mixed with quicklime*. When prepared with the hot water, it is recommended in the Swedish memoirs to be used by anglers as a bait. It may be made into any form, is not softened by the cold water, and the fishes are fond of it.—As a food, physicians condemn the too free use of cheese. When new, it is extremely difficult of digestion: when old, it becomes acid and hot; and, from Dr Percival's experiments, is evidently of a septic nature. It is a common opinion, that old cheese digests every thing, yet is left undigested itself; but this is without any solid foundation.—Cheese made from the milk of sheep digests sooner than that from the milk of cows, but is less nourishing; that from the milk of goats digests sooner than either, but is also the least nourishing. In general, it is a kind of food fit only for the laborious, or those whose organs of digestion are strong.

Every country has places noted for this commodity; thus Chester and Gloucester cheese are famous in England; and the Parmesan cheese is in no less repute abroad, especially in France. This sort of cheese is entirely made of sweet cow-milk: but at Roquefort in Languedoc, they make it of ewe's milk; and in other places it is usual to add goat or ewe's milk in a certain proportion to that of the cow. There is likewise a kind of medicated cheese made by intimately mixing the expressed juice of certain herbs, as sage, balm, mint, &c. with the curd before it is fashioned into a cheese.—The Laplanders make a sort of cheese of the milk of their rein-deer; which is not only of great service to them as food, but on many other occasions. It is a very common thing in these climates to have a limb numbed and frozen with the cold; their remedy for this is the heating an iron red hot, and thrusting it through the middle of one of these cheeses; they catch what drops out, and with this anoint the limb, which soon recovers it. They are subject also to coughs and diseases of the lungs, and these they cure by the same sort of medicine: they boil a large quantity of the cheese in the fresh deer's milk, and drink the decoction in large draughts warm several times a day. They make a less strong decoction of the same kind also, which they use as their common drink, for three or four days together, at several times of the year. They do this to prevent the mischief they are liable to from their water, which is otherwise their constant drink, and is not good.

The hundred weight of cheese pays on importation £1 s. 3½ d. and draws back on exportation £1 s. 1½ d. at the rate of 6 s. 8 d. The cheese of Ireland is prohibited to be imported.

CHEESE-Rennet. See Gallium.

CHIRANTHUS, stock-gilliflower, or Wallflower: a genus of the filicaula order, belonging to the tetradyamia class of plants. The species are 13, but the following three are most worthy of notice. 1. The cheiri or common wall-flower, with ligneous, long, tough roots; an upright, woody, abiding stalk, divided into many erect angular branches, forming a bushy head from one to two feet high, closely garnished with spear-shaped, acute, smooth leaves, and all the branches terminating in long erect spikes of numerous flowers, which in different varieties are yellow, bloody, white, &c. 2. The incanus, or hoary cheiranthus, with ligneous, long, naked, white roots; and upright, strong, woody, abiding stem, from one to three feet high, branchy at top, adorned with long, spear-shaped, obtuse, hoary leaves; and the top of the stalk and all the branches terminated by erect spikes of flowers from one to two or three feet long, of different colours in different varieties. 3. The annus, or ten-weeks-stock, with an upright, woody, smooth stalk, divided into a branchy head, 12 or 15 inches high, garnished with spear-shaped, blunt, hoary leaves, a little indented, and all the branches terminated by long erect spikes of numerous flowers of different colours in different varieties.—The two first sorts are very hardy evergreen biennials or perennials; but the last is an annual plant, so must be continued by seed sown every year; and even the two first, notwithstanding their being perennial, degenerate so much in their flowers after the first year, that it will be proper also to raise an annual annual supply of them. The seeds are to be saved only from the plants with single flowers; for the double ones bring no seeds to perfection. The seeds are to be chosen from such flowers as have five, six, or more petals, or from such as grow near to the double ones. They may be sown in the full ground in the spring, and may be afterwards transplanted. When fine doubles of the two first kinds are obtained, they may be multiplied by slips from the old plants.