Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 5.djvu/467

Rh volcanic activity, and along the coast are earthy cones covered with green-sward, from which issue springs of muddy water emitting bubbles of gas. Copper, iron, and silver ore have been discovered ; but the island is chiefly noted for its petroleum wells, the oil derived from which is of excellent quality, and is extensively used in the com position of paint, as it preserves wood from the ravages of insects. Timber is not abundant, but the gamboge tree and the wood- oil tree are found of a good size. Tobacco, cotton, sugar-cane, hemp, and indigo are grown, and the staple article is rice, which is of superior quality, and the chief article of export. The inhabitants of the island are mainly Mughs. Cheduba fell to the Burmese in the latter part of the last century. From them it was captured in 1824 by the British, whose possession of it was confirmed in 1826 by the treaty concluded with the Burmese at Yandaboo.  CHE-FOO, or undefined, as it is called by the, a of Northern, on the southern  of the , in the  of  near the mouth of the , and about 30 s east of the  of. Till recently it was quite a small place, and had only the rank of an ; but it was chosen as the  of  opened to foreign  in 1858 by the  of, and it is now the residence of a , or  of a , the centre of a gradually-increasing , and the seat of a  ate, a  , and a considerable foreign settlement. The  is ly extending, and though most of the  are small -keepers and s of the lowest, the s are for the most part well and solidly  of. The foreign settlement occupies a position between the  and the, which neither affords a convenient access for  nor allows space for any great extension of area. Its growth, however, has hitherto been steady and rapid. Various s have been laid out, a large erected for the reception of the visitors who resort to the place as a  in, and the  wants of the community supplied by a  and a. Though the is deep and extensive, and possessed of excellent age, large s have to be ed at a considerable distance from the shore. The foreign is mainly in the hands of the  and, the  and the  ranking next in importance. In 1872 there entered the 233  s, with a nage of 97,239 s and s valued at 144,887; while in the same year the s of all other alities numbered 348, with a nage of 149,197 s and a value of 177,168. The are mainly len and, , and ; and the  include , , and , raw , and - d by the s of , s from , a coarse kind of , s, and. A certain amount of is carried on with the n settlements of, in which the edible  gathered in the shallows of the  are exchanged for , s, and sundries from.  CHEESE, a solidified preparation from milk, the essential constituent of which is the proteinous or nitrogenous substance casein. All cheese contains in addition some proportion of fatty matter or butter, and in the more valuable varieties, the butter present is often greater in amount than the casein. Cheese being thus a compound substance of no definite chemical composition is found in commerce of many different varieties and qualities ; and such qualities are generally recognized by the names of the localities in which they are manufactured. The principal distinctions arise from differences in the composition and condition of the milk operated upon, from variations in the method of preparation and curing, and from the use of the milk of other animals besides the cow, as, for example, the goat and the ewe, from the milk of both of which cheese is manufactured on a commercial scale. The quality and the composition of the milk operated on are of prime importance in cheese-making. Not only does this substance vary widely in richness and flavour owing to the breed, the nature of the food, and the state of the health of the animal yielding it, and many other circumstances ; but in cheese-making the differences are still further increased, in some cases by adding cream to it, and in others by using it as skim-milk or milk deprived of a portion of its fat. Taking as a standard the ordinary sweet milk of cows, the following analyses (No. 1 given on the authority of Dr Parkes, and No. 2 by Dr Voelcker) may be taken to represent its average composition:—

Composition Water Butter Casein Milk Sugar Mineral matter. No. 1. 867 3-7 4-0 5-0 6 No 2. 86-65 3-99 3-47 5-11 78 The object of the cheese-maker is to obtain in a solid form as large a proportion as possible of the casein and butter contained in the milk dealt with. The poverty in these constituents of the whey or liquid matter separated in the process of making cheese is therefore, to some extent. a measure of the success of the operation. The average composition of the whey drained off may be thus stated:—

Water 92&quot;95 Butter -24 Casein 81 Milk Sugar and Lactic Acid 5 27 Mineral matter -&quot;3 Milk, as is well known, if allowed to stand for some time, becomes thick, and is then separable into two portions a solid white curd, and a greenish liquid whey. Such a coagulation and separation is essential in the making of cheese ; but only to a small extent, in Holland and some other localities, is the natural acid coagulation taken advantage of. It has been assumed that the solid con stituents of milk are held in solution by an alkaline substance, and that coagulation is the result of the neutra lization of the alkali by the development within the fluid of lactic acid, as in the case of sour milk, or by the addition of an acid substance as is sometimes the practice ; but this theory does not satisfactorily account for all the phenomena of coagulation. Acid substances, however, do readily curdle cheese, and hydrochloric acid, tartaric acid, vinegar, and cream of tartar have all been employed to produce coagula tion for cheese-making. The curding is also, in practice, produced by the action of such substances as the juice of figs, and decoctions of thistle tops, artichoke flowers, the butter-wort, and other plants, But the substance used uniformly in Great Britain, and in all great cheese-producing districts, is rennet, a preparation of the fourth or digesting stomach of the suckling calf. Rennet is prepared by cutting up the membrane in strips, salting, smoking, and sometimes treating it with spices and aromatics. The influence of rennet is due to the fact of its exciting a kind of fermentative action; but that it thereby changes the sugar of milk (lactin) into lactic acid, and so coagulates the casein, has been denied by Dr Voelcker, who holds its action to be &quot; sui generis, and as yet only known by its effects.&quot; In the practice of cheese-making it is found necessary, in order to hasten the coagulating action of rennet, and to produce a curd of sufficient hardness, to heat the milk to a temperature which varies from 72 to 85 or 90 Fahr. The lower temperature, it is found, yields a soft cheese, retaining 