A great deal of activity has lately been exhibited in so-called dairy
bacteriology, and a long list has already been compiled of milk,
cheese, and butter microbes; and agricultural authorities, even in
this country, are slowly awakening to the fact that, in order to
compete on modern lines with foreign dairy produce, dairy schools must
be established, where bacteriology is taught, and where instruction is
given in the principles of scientific butter and cheese making.
But bacteria of the brewery and of the dairy are not the only useful
germs which are to be found on the shelves of microbe museums. Wine
and tobacco manufacturers on application may respectively obtain the
bacterial means of transforming the crudest must into the costliest
claret, and the coarsest tobacco into the most fragrant Havana.
Already considerable progress has been made in the isolation of
particular varieties of wine-yeast, whilst highly encouraging results
have been obtained by Suchsland and others in the separation of
various valuable tobacco-fermenting organisms. Agricultural
authorities, again, owe a debt of gratitude to those distinguished
investigators whose labours have discovered the art of imprisoning the
micro-organisms which play such an important part in the fertilisation
of the soil. Bacterial fertilisers are amongst the latest achievements
which bacteriology has accomplished in this wonderful half-century,
and the purchase of special varieties of bacteria to suit the
requirements of particular kinds of leguminous plants is now fast
becoming a mere everyday commercial transaction. But efforts for the
amelioration of the conditions under which plant life is carried on
have not been confined to providing plants with suitable bacterial
friends; vigorous and successful efforts have been made to remove from
their _entourage_ those bacterial enemies and undesirable parasites
which have for so long played so important a part in the crop-returns
of many an agriculturist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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