ROQUEFORT CHEESE is made from the milk of sheep and goats, and is a very popular cheese among epicures. The care and skill required in its manufacture is very remarkable. The great herd of sheep at the village of Roquefort, in France, is pastured on an immense plain of the richest herbage. Their yield of milk is stimulated in every possible way, even by beating their udders with the hand as soon as the milking is done. They are fed on prepared foods and the water they drink is whitened with barley flour. There are many thousands of these sheep, and the milking hour (morning and evening), when the many maidens with their pails are seen hurrying over the fields, each one in search of some favorite animal, is truly a very picturesque and interesting scene. These pails of milk are taken to the farm house, skimmed, strained, and warmed almost to the boiling-point, and then emptied into enormously large pans and left to gather into curds. The morning and evening milk are thrown together and then well-stirred with willow sticks. A portion of rennet is added and then the covers are placed over and it is left to gather the cream. It passes through a half-dozen operations before the mouldy-bread process has its turn, and the mouldy bread is as carefully prepared as the cheese itself. The bread is made from the finest of wheat or of winter barley, with a large quantity of brewers' yeast, is kneaded to excess and thoroughly baked. After
standing a day the crust is removed and then pounded in a mor tar, and finally it is put away in a damp place until every crumb is covered with mould, and then the new cheeses are rubbed with it until every part has become incorporated with the mouldy bread, and this forms the peculiarity of the Roquefort cheese. Indeed, layers of this bread are usually put between the layers of curd, so that they may supply it liberally with green mould. After pressing the curd for several days, the cheese is wrapped in linen and dried, after which they are taken by the shepherd dairy men to the village and sold to the owners of the vaults which are made in the limestone caves in the rocks hard-by the town. In these caves they are piled up and salted, and frequently rehandled and rubbed so that the salt will penetrate them, after which they are scraped and pricked with long needles, so that the mould may run entirely through them, and they are again piled up until per fectly dry and covered with long white mould. Very few people who know the cheese well are aware of the care that is taken to please their palates.