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 Sweden as a bait for 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 acrid and hot; and, from Dr Percival's experiments, is evidently of a septic nature. It is a common opinion that old cheese digests everything, 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 Rochefort 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. They are subject also to coughs and distempers 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 do this to prevent the mischiefs 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 1s. 3½d. and draws back on exportation 1s. 1½d. at the rate of 6s. 8d.

By methods of making Cheese in England. The double Gloucester is a cheese that pleases almost every palate. The best of this kind is made from new, or (as it is called in that and the adjoining counties) covered milk.

An inferior sort is made from what is called half-covered milk; though when any of these cheeses turn out to be good, people are deceived, and often purchase them for the best covered milk cheese: but farmers who are honest have them stamped with a piece of wood made in the shape of a heart, so that any person may know them.

It will be every farmer's interest (if he has a sufficient number of cows) to make a large cheese from one meal's milk. This, when brought in warm, will be easily changed or turned with the rennet; but if the morning or night's milk be to be mixed with that which is fresh from the cow, it will be a longer time before it turns, nor will it change sometimes without being heated over the fire, by which it often gets dust or foot, or smoke, which will give the cheese a very disagreeable flavour.

When the milk is turned, the whey should be carefully strained from the curd. The curd should be broken small with the hands; and when it is equally broken, it must be put by little at a time into the vat, carefully breaking it as it is put in. The vat should be filled an inch or more above the brim, that when the whey is pressed out it may not shrink below the brim; if it does, the cheese will be worth very little.

But first, before the curd is put in, a cheese-cloth or strainer should be laid at the bottom of the vat; and this should be so large, that when the vat is filled with the curd, the ends of the cloth may turn again over the top of it. When this is done, it should be taken to the press, and there remain for the space of two hours; when it should be turned and have a clean cloth put under it, and turned over as before. It must then be pressed again, and remain in the press six or eight hours; when it should again be turned and rubbed on each side with salt. After this it must be pressed again for the space of 12 or 14 hours more; when, if any of the edges project, they should be pared off: it may then be put on a dry board, where it should be regularly turned every day. It is a good way to have three or four holes bored round the lower part of the vat, that the whey may drain to perfectly from the cheese as not the least particle of it may remain.

The prevailing opinion of the people of Gloucestershire and the neighbouring counties is, that the cheeses will spoil if they do not scrape and wash them when they are found to be mouldy. But others think that suffering the mould to remain, mellows them, provided they are turned every day. Those, however, who will have the mould off, should cause it to be removed with a clean dry flannel, as the washing the cheeses is only a means of making the mould (which is a species of fungus rooted in the coat) grow again immediately.

Some people scald the curd: but this is a bad and mercenary practice; it robs the cheese of its fatness, and can only be done with a view to raise a greater quantity of whey butter, or to bring the cheeses forward for sale, by making them appear older than they really are.

As most people like to purchase high-coloured cheese, it may be right to mix a little annatto with the milk before it is turned. No cheese will look yellow without it; and though it does not in the least add to the goodness, it is perfectly innocent in its nature and effects.

It is not in the power of any person to make good cheese with bad rennet; therefore the following receipt should be attended to. Let the well, maw, rennet-bag (or by whatever name it is called), be perfectly sweet; for if it be the least tainted, the cheese will never be good. When this is fit for the purpose, three pints or two quarts of soft water (clean and sweet) should be mixed with salt, wherein should be put sweetbrier, rose leaves and flowers, cinnamon, mace, cloves, and, in short, almost every sort of spice and aromatic that can be procured; and if these are put into two quarts of water, they must boil gently till the liquor is reduced to three pints, and care should be taken that this liquor is not smoked. It should be strained clean from the spices, &c. and when found to be not warmer than milk from the cow, it should be poured upon the well or maw. A lemon may then be sliced into it; when it may remain a day or two: After which it should be strained again, and put in a bottle; where, if well corked, it will keep good for twelve months or more. It will smell like a perfume; and a small quantity of it will turn the milk, and give the cheese a pleasing flavour. After this, if the well be salted, and dried for a week or two near the fire, it will do for the purpose again almost as well as before.

Cheddar cheese is held in high esteem; but its goodness is said to be chiefly owing to the land whereon the cows feed, as the method of making it is the same as is pursued throughout Somersetshire, and the adjoining counties.

Cheeshire cheese is much admired; yet no people take less pains with the rennet than the Cheeshire farmers. But their cheeses are so large as often to exceed one hundred pounds weight each; to this (and the age they are kept, the richness of the land, and the keeping such a number of cows as to make such a cheese without adding a second meal's milk) their excellence may be attributed. Indeed they salt the curd (which may make a difference), and keep the cheeses in a damp place after they are made, and are very careful to turn them daily.

But of all the cheese this kingdom produces, none is more highly esteemed than the Stilton, which is called the Parmesan of England, and (except faulty) is never sold for less than 1s. or 1s. 2d. per pound.

The Stilton cheeses are usually made in square vats, and weigh from six to twelve pounds each cheese. Immediately after they are made, it is necessary to put them into square boxes made exactly to fit them; they being so extremely rich, that except this precaution be taken they are apt to bulge out, and break afiunder. They should be continually and daily turned in these boxes, and must be kept two years before they are properly mellowed for sale.

Some make them in a net, somewhat like a cabbage net; so that they appear, when made, not unlike an a- corn. But these are never so good as the other, having a thicker coat, and wanting all that rich flavour and mellowness which make them so pleasing.

It is proper to mention that the making of these cheeses is not confined to the Stilton farmers, as many others in Huntingdonshire (not forgetting Rutland and Northamptonshires) make a similar sort, sell them for the same price, and give all of them the name of Stilton cheese.

Though these farmers are remarked for cleanliness, they take very little pains with the rennet, as they in general only cut pieces from the vell or maw, which they put into the milk, and move gently about with the hand, by which means it breaks or turns it so, that they easily obtain the curd. But if the method above described for making rennet were put in practice, they would make their cheese still better; at least they would not have so many faulty and unsound cheeses; for notwithstanding their cheeses bear such a name and price, they often find them so bad as not to be saleable; which is probably owing to their being so careless about the rennet.

It has been alleged, that as good cheese might be made in other counties, if people would adhere to the Stilton plan, which is this—They make a cheese every morning; and to this meal of new milk they add the cream taken from that which is milked the night before. This, and the age of their cheeses, have been supposed the only reasons why they are preferred to others; for from the nicest observation, it does not appear that their land is in any respect superior to that of other counties.

Excellent cream cheeses are made in Lincolnshire, by adding the cream of one meal’s milk to milk which comes immediately from the cow; these are pressed gently two or three times, turned for a few days, and are then disposed of at the rate of 1s. per pound, to be eaten while new with radishes, salad, &c.

Many people give skimmed milk to pigs, but the whey will do equally as well after cheeses are made from this milk; such cheeses will always sell for at least 2d. per pound, which will amount to a large sum annually where they make much butter. The peasants and many of the farmers in the north of England never eat any better cheese; and though they appear harder, experience hath proved them to be much easier of digestion than any new milk cheeses. A good market may always be found for the sale of them at Bristol.

Account of the making of Parmesan Cheese: by Mr Zappa of Milan, in answer to queries from Arthur Young, Esq.

“Are the cows regularly fed in stables?”—From the middle of April, or sooner if possible, the cows are sent to pasture in the meadows till the end of November usually.

“Or only fed in stables in winter?”—When the season is past, and snow comes, they are put into stables for the whole winter, and fed with hay.

“Do they remain in the pasture from morning till night? or only in hot weather?”—Between nine and ten in the morning the cows are sent to water, and then to the pastures, where they remain four or five hours at most, and at three or four o’clock are driven to the stables if the season is fresh, or under porticos if hot; where, for the night, a convenient quantity of hay is given them.

“In what months are they kept at pasture the whole day?”—Mostly answered already; but it might be said, that no owner will leave his cattle, without great cause, in uncovered places at night. It happens only to the shepherds from the Alps, when they pass, because it is impossible to find stables for all their cattle.

“What is the opinion in the Lodefan, on the best conduct for profit in the management of meadows?”

“For a dairy farm of 100 cows, which yields daily a cheese weighing 70 to 75 lb. of 28 ounces, are wanted 1000 perticas of land. Of these about 800 are standing meadows, the other 200 are in cultivation for corn and grass fields in rotation.

“Do they milk the cows morning and evening?”

Those that are in milk are milked morning and evening, with exception of such as are near calving.

“One hundred cows being wanted to make a Lodefan each day, it is supposed that it is made with the milk of the evening and the following morning; or of the morning and evening of the same day: how is it?”

The 100 cows form a dairy farm of a good large cheese; it is reckoned that 80 are in milk, and 20 with calves sucking, or near calving. They reckon one with the other about 32 bocealis of 32 oz. of milk. Such is the quantity for a cheese of about 70 lb. of 28 ounces. They join the evening with the morning milk, because to it is fresher than if it was that of the morning and evening of the same day. The morning milk would be 24 hours old when the next morning the cheese should be made.

“Do they skim or not the milk to make butter before they make the cheese?”

From the evening milk all the cream possible is taken away for butter, mascarpone (cream-cheese), &c. The milk of the morning ought to be skimmed slightly; but every one skims as much cream as he can. The butter is sold on the spot immediately at 24 sous; the cheese at about 28 sous. The butter loses nothing in weight; the cheese loses one-third of it, is subject to heat, and requires expenses of service, attention, warehouses, &c., before it is sold; and a man in two hours makes 45 to 50 lb. of butter that is sold directly. However, it is not possible to leave much cream in the milk to make Lodefan cheese, called grated cheese; because if it is too rich, it does not last long, and it is necessary to consume it while young and found.

“Is Parmesan or Lodefan cheese made every day in the year or not?”

With 100 cows it is. In winter, however, the milk being less in quantity, the cheese is of lesser weight, but certainly more delicate.

“After gathering or uniting the milk, either skimmed or not, what is exactly the whole operation?”

The morning of the 3d of March 1786, I have seen the whole operation, having gone on purpose to the spot to see the whole work from beginning to end. At 16 Italian hours, or ten in the morning, according to the northern way to account hours, the skimming of that morning’s milk, gathered only two hours before, was finished. I did, meanwhile, examine the boiler or pot. At the top it was eight feet (English) diameter, or thereabout; and about five feet three inches deep, made Cheese made like a bell, and narrowing towards the bottom to about two one-half feet. They joined the cream produced that morning with the other produced by the milk of the evening before. That produced by this last milk was double in quantity to that of the morning milk, because it had the whole night to unite, and that of the morning had only two hours to do it, in which it could not separate much. Of the cream some was defined to make mascarpone (cream-cheese), and they put the rest into the machine for making butter. Out of the milk of the evening before and of that morning that was all put together after skimming, they took and put into the boiler 272 bozcali, and they put under it two faggots of wood; which being burnt, were sufficient to give the milk a warmth a little superior to lukewarm. Then the boiler being withdrawn from the fire, the foreman put into it the rennet, which they prepare in small balls of one ounce each, turning the ball in his hand always kept in the milk entirely covered; and after it was perfectly dissolved, he covered the boiler to keep the milk defended, that it might not suffer from the coldness of the season, in particular as it was a windy day. I went then to look on the man that was making mascarpone, &c., and then we went twice to examine if the milk was sufficiently coagulated. At the 18 hours, according to the Italian clocks, or noon, the true manufacture of cheese began. The milk was coagulated in a manner to be taken from the boiler in pieces from the surface. The foreman, with a stick that had 18 points, or rather nine small pieces of wood fixed by their middle in the end of it, and forming nine points in each side, began to break exactly all the coagulated milk, and did continue to do so for more than half an hour, from time to time examining it to see its state. He ordered to renew the fire, and four faggots of willow branches were used all at once; he turned the boiler that the fire might act; and then the underman began to work in the milk with a stick like the above, but with only four smaller sticks at the top, forming eight points, four at each side, a span long each point. In a quarter of an hour the foreman mixed in the boiler the proper quantity of saffron, and the milk was all in knobs, and finer grained than before, by the effect of turning and breaking the coagulation, or curd, continually. Every moment the fire was renewed or fed; but with a faggot only at a time, to continue it regular. The milk was never heated much, nor does it hinder to keep the hand in it to know the fineness of the grain, which refines continually by the stickwork of the underman. It is of the greatest consequence to mind when the grain begins to take a consistence. When it comes to this state, the boiler is turned from the fire, and the underman immediately takes out the whey, putting it into proper receivers. In that manner the grain subsides to the bottom of the boiler; and leaving only in it whey enough to keep the grain covered a little, the foreman extending himself as much as he can over and in the boiler, unites with his hands the grained milk, making like a body of paste of it. Then a large piece of linen is run by him under that paste, while another man keeps the four corners of it, and the whey is directly put again into the boiler, by which is facilitated the means of raising that paste that is taken out of the boiler, and put for one quarter of an hour into the receiver where the whey was put before, in the same linen it was taken from the boiler; which boiler is turned again directly on the fire, to extract the malcarpa (whey-cheese); and is a second product, eaten by poor people. After the paste remained for a quarter of an hour in that receiver, it was taken out and turned into the wooden form called fassera, without any thing else made than the roundness, having neither top or bottom. Immediately after having turned it into that round wooden form, they put a piece of wood like a cheese on it, putting and increasing gradually weights on it, which serve to force out the remnant of whey; and in the evening the cheese so formed is carried into the warehouse, where, after 24 hours, they begin to give the salt. It remains in that warehouse for 15 or 20 days; but in summer only from 8 to 12 days. Meanwhile the air and salt form the crust to it; and then it is carried into another warehouse for a different service. In the second warehouse they turn every day all the cheeses that are not older than six months; and afterwards it is enough if they are only turned every 48 or 60 hours, keeping them clean, in particular of that bloom which is inevitable to them, and which, if neglected, turns mouldy, and causes the cheese to acquire a bad smell.

The Lodesan, because it is a province watered, has a great deal of meadows, and abounds with cows, its product being mostly in cheese, butter, &c. However, the province of Pavia makes a great deal of that cheese; and we Milanese do likewise the same from the side of Porte Tofa, Romana, Ticinese, and Vercellina, because we have fine meadows and dairy farms.

**Cheese-Remedies.** See Gallium and Runnet.

**Chegoë, or Nigua,** the Indian name of an insect common in Mexico, and also found in other hot countries where it is called *pique,* is an exceeding small animal, not very unlike a flea, and is bred in the dust. It fixes upon the feet, and breaking insensibly the cuticle, it nettles betwixt that and the true skin, which also, unless it is immediately taken out, it breaks, and pierces at last to the flesh, multiplying with a rapidity almost incredible. It is seldom discovered until it pierces the true skin, when it causes an intolerable itching. These insects, with their astonishing multiplication, would soon displace those countries, were it less easy to avoid them, or were the inhabitants less dexterous in getting them out before they begin to spread. On the other hand, nature, in order to lessen the evil, has not only denied them wings, but even that conformation of the legs and those strong muscles which are given to the flea for leaping. The poor, however, who are in some measure doomed to live in the dust, and to a habitual neglect of their persons, suffer these insects sometimes to multiply so far as to make large holes in their flesh, and even to occasion dangerous wounds.

**Cheiranthus, stock-gilliflower, or Wallflower:** A genus of the 39th natural order, *Siliquose,* and belonging to the tetradymania class of plants. The germen is marked with a glandulous denticle on each side; the calyx is clove, with two of its leaves gibbous at the base; the seeds plane. The species are 13; but the following three are most worthy of notice.

1. *Thecheir,* or common wall-flower, with liguleaceous, 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 spears. CHEIRANTHUS 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 annuus, 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 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.