In Tuscany, the cheeses, after being hung up for some time at a proper distance from the fire, are put to ripen in an underground, cool, and damp cellar; and the celebrated French cheeses of Roquefort, are supposed to owe much of the peculiar estimation in which they are held, to the cool and uniform temperature of the subterranean caverns in which the inhabitants of the village have long been accustomed to preserve them. Ammoniacal Cheese. The influence of the mode of curing, is shown very strikingly in the small ammoniacal cheeses of Brie, which are very much esteemed in Paris. They are soft unpressed cheeses, which are allowed to ripen in a room, the temperature of which is kept between 60° and 70° Fahrenheit, till they begin to undergo the putrefactive fermentation, and emit an ammoniacal odor. They are generally unctuous, and sometimes so small as not to weigh more than an ounce. Inoculating Cheese. It is said that a cheese, possessed of no very striking taste of its own, may be inoculated with any flavor we approve, by putting into it with a scoop a small portion of the cheese which we are desirous that it should be made to resemble. Of course, this can apply only to cheeses otherwise of equal richness, for we could scarcely expect to give a Gloucester the flavor of a Stilton, by merely patting into it a small portion of a rich and esteemed Stilton cheese. [_Johnston and various other authorities._] [Illustration: Fig. 19. Cheese-Press.] Fig. 19 is a _self-acting cheese-press_, light yet strong. The cheese itself gives a pressure of twelve times its own weight; and if this is insufficient, additional weight may be added as required. The following statements were made by those receiving premiums from the New York State Agricultural Society: "Number of cows kept, eleven. Cheese made from two milkings, in the English manner; no addition made of cream. For a cheese of twenty pounds, a piece of rennet about two inches square is soaked about twelve hours in one pint of water. As rennets differ much in quality, enough should be used to coagulate the milk _sufficiently_ in about forty minutes. No salt is put _into_ the cheese, nor any on the outside during the first six or eight hours it is pressed; but a thin coat of fine Liverpool salt is kept on the outside during the remainder of the time it remains in press. The cheeses are pressed forty-eight hours, under a weight of seven or eight cwt. Nothing more is required but to turn the cheeses once a day on the shelves."