rather than any injury in
flavor that the mold causes. Mold spores are so widely distributed that,
if proper temperature and moisture conditions prevail, these spores will
always develop. At temperatures in the neighborhood of 40 deg. F. and
below, mold growth is exceedingly slow, and often fructification does
not occur, the only evidence of the mold being the white, felt-like
covering that is made up of the vegetating filaments. The use of
paraffin has been suggested as a means of overcoming this growth, the
cheese being dipped at an early stage into melted paraffin. Recent
experiments have shown that "off" flavors sometimes develop where cheese
are paraffined directly from the press. If paraffin is too hard, it has
a tendency to crack and separate from the rind, thus allowing molds to
develop beneath the paraffin coat, where the conditions are ideal as to
moisture, for evaporation is excluded and the air consequently
saturated. The use of formalin (2% solution) has been suggested as a
wash for the outside of the cheese. This substance or sulfur is also
applied in a gaseous form. Double bandaging is also resorted to as a
means of making the cheese more presentable through the removal of the
outer bandage.

The nature of these molds has not been thoroughly studied as yet. The
ordinary blue-green bread mold, _Penicillium glaucum_, is most
frequently found, but there are numerous other forms that appear,
especially at low temperatures.

~Poisonous cheese.~ Cases of acute poisoning arising from the ingestion of
cheese are reported from time to time. Vaughan has succeeded in showing
that this condition is due to the formation of a highly poisonous
alkaloid which he has isolated, and which he calls _tyrotoxicon_.[220]
This poisonous ptomaine has also been demonstrated in milk and other
milk products, and is undoubtedly due to the development of various
putrefactive bacteria that find their way into the milk. It seems quite
probable that the development of these toxic organisms can also go on
in the cheese after it is taken from the press.

~Prevention or cheese defects.~ The defective conditions previously
referred to can rarely be overcome in cheese so as to improve the
affected product, for they only become manifest in most cases during the
later stages of the curing process. The only remedy against future loss
is to recognize the conditions that are apt to prevail during the
occurrence of an outbreak and see that the c