evelops too rapidly, so that the
cheese to ripen properly must be kept at a low temperature. The town of
Roquefort is situated in a limestone country, in a region full of
caves, and it is in these natural caves that most of the ripening is
done. These caverns are always very moist and have a temperature ranging
from 35 deg. to 44 deg. F., so that the growth of the fungus is retarded
considerably. The spread of the mold throughout the ripening mass is
also assisted in a mechanical way. The partially-matured cheese are run
through a machine that pricks them full of small holes. These slender
canals allow the mold organism to penetrate the whole mass more
thoroughly, the moldy straw matting upon which the ripening cheese are
placed helping to furnish an abundant seeding of the desired germ.

When new factories are constructed it is of advantage to introduce this
necessary germ in quantities, and the practice is sometimes followed of
rubbing the walls and cellars of the new location with material taken
from the old established factory. In this custom, developed in purely an
empirical manner, is to be seen a striking illustration of a
bacteriological process crudely carried out.

In the Stilton cheese, one of the highly prized moldy cheeses of
England, the desired mold fungus is introduced into the green cheese by
exchanging plugs taken with a cheese trier from a ripe Stilton.

~Ripening of soft cheese.~ The type of ripening which takes place in the
soft cheeses is materially different from that which occurs in the hard
type. The peptonizing action does not go on uniformly throughout the
cheese, but is hastened by the development of molds and bacteria on the
outside that exert a solvent action on the casein. For this reason, soft
cheeses are usually made up in small sizes, so that this action may be
hastened. The organisms that take part in this process are those that
are able to form enzyms (similar in their action to trypsin, galactase,
etc.), and these soluble ferments gradually diffuse from the outside
through the cheese.

Most of these peptonizing bacteria are hindered in their growth by the
presence of lactic acid, so that in many cases the appearance of the
digesting organisms on the surface is delayed until the acidity of the
mass is reduced to the proper point by the development of other
organisms, principally molds, which prefer an acid substratum for their
growth.

In Brie cheese a blue coating of mold develo