If the milk you have in your vat is mature, or, in other words, slightly tending toward sour, heat it as rapidly as possible when preparing for the application of rennet. In the cool extremes of the season heat milk to 86° Fahrenheit and in warm weather to 85° before rennet is applied. If the milk is all right as to sweetness, as the bulk of milk is, heat it up to the desired point gradually, stirring it gently at frequent intervals with a long-handled dipper. You stir for the purpose of keeping down the cream and evenly distributing the warmth that is permeating the lacteal mass. You stir it with great gentleness and care because milk globules are eggs in miniature, and, like their large relatives of biped production, they must be handled with care. If you wish to heat to 85° and have an under-heater vat or fire flue beneath the milk, withdraw the fire before it has quite reached that point, as the after warmth will carry it up a degree or two. Be perfectly precise in all such little points, for on them hinge big results. With milk in normal condition as to maturity, standing at a temperature of 85° in both ends of the vat, and with no cream visible on the surface, you are ready to take another step in the course of manufacture. If colored cheese are desired, now apply annottoine sufficient to give a rich, golden hue. Know exactly by experiment its strength as a dye, always know the quantity of milk to a pound and portion out accordingly. Work the coloring into the fluid with the same gentleness with which you have heretofore manipulated it while raising the temperature. When the milk is all of one even, yellow tinge, attesting that the annotto is represented equally in every part, it is ready for the real inceptor of cheese, rennet. The tendency of modern cheese making is toward quick coagulation of milk. The larger infusion of rennet necessary for this purpose begets cheese that can be quickly cured for a market where they are expected to be soon consumed. The old rule of coagulation in twenty minutes is now nearly obsolete, although it will always hold good for cheese of long keeping qualities. Fall made cheese that are expected to be consumed during the winter months should be strengthened for age by coagulation in from fifteen to eighteen minutes. When we are dealing with the average spring and summer make, trade demands more perishable stock and we must cater to it. If you do not know the strength of your rennet and you want the milk to thicken in eight or nine minutes, as it should do, previously test the lactic juice by putting a teaspoonful into a tumbler of milk kept warm at 85°. If the glass of fluid thickens in five minutes, you need one quart of such rennet juice for every 800 pounds of milk to effect coagulation, as stated above. If the tested quantity thickens in less or longer time, a proportionate less or greater amount is required for your purpose. Measure the rennet extract with exactness, so that there