Our viands

taking them out to pare them and turn them daily, till they had acquired solidity. We all remember the great cheese made in this way at Cheddar, in Somersetshire, for presenta- tion to the Queen : it was formed from one meal's milk of all the cows in the parish, all the farmer's daughters assisting as dairymaids ; but the huge cheese was not, we believe, quite the success it deserved to be, its enormous size requiring too long a time to ripen properly. Cheddar, however, is even now at the head of British cheese-making, and turns out immense cheeses of excellent quality, still distancing all competitors, although Canadian Cheddar is very good, and is very frequently passed off as the genuine English article. The prince of English cheeses is the Stilton, made of cream added to new milk, but this also is now frequently imitated, so that you can seldom be sure of getting the real Leicestershire product. A Stilton cheese is, and has always been, a famous Christmas dish, and when rich and fully ripe is not to be surpassed. Formerly, the whole cheese, with a napkin pinned round it, was set on the table, and scooped out until the rind only remained, the ripening process being hastened by a bottle of good port wine being poured into it. But these are degenerate days : people now seldom make their luncheon of bread and cheese, and even the Dorsetshire peasant is no longer content with a great crust of bread and that mouldy cheesen which proverbially required a hatchet to cut it, but which could be purchased at about threepence a pound, and was so appetising that it was commonly said it might be eaten till you were hungry again. This was the poorer sort of Dorset cheese, made of milk DAIRY PRODUCE 123 skimmed once, and sometimes twice ; but the richer kind of mouldy cheesen, into which a portion of cream entered, was almost equal to Stilton, holding a place midway between that and the fashionable foreign makes known as Roquefort and Gorgon zola, but it is little made nowadays, and may be deemed extinct, as are also those thin cheeses which used to be made in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire, and known as single Gloucester, or toasting-cheese. The double Gloucester still enters the market, and is a good cheese, although not to be compared to Cheddar, or to that other well-known variety from Cheshire, which latter is also scarce in the London market, although you may purchase it in Rome. The little round Dutch cheeses are still much sold, but it is hard to see why they are chosen in preference to others of far superior quality and very little higher in price.