=Camembert cheese.= A typical example of soft cheese is one of the French types, known as Camembert. This cheese is prepared from cow's milk which is curdled by rennet. The curd is not cut but is dipped into the forms, which condition, taken with the absence of pressure in forming the cheese, accounts for the large quantity of whey in it. The finished cheese are about one inch in thickness and three inches in diameter. In the ripening, the moisture and temperature of the curing room are very carefully regulated. The first stage in the ripening is due to the rennet and the lactic bacteria. Later there appears on the surface of the moist cheese, a moldy growth. In this, there are at least two kinds of molds, the ordinary mold that appears on sour milk, _Oidium lactis_, and another that is related to the bread mold but which has a white instead of a green fruiting stage. These molds are confined to the surface of the cheese but the enzymes which they produce diffuse into the substance, changing the color from a dull, opaque white to a translucent yellow. The acid that has been formed by the lactic bacteria is gradually used up by the growth of the mold, and conditions then become favorable for the growth of putrefactive bacteria which digest the curd. The cheese is ready for use when the action of the mold has penetrated to the center of the cheese, and before any pronounced putrefaction has taken place. The production of the typical flavor is dependent upon there being a definite relation between the growth of the molds and bacteria. This relation is dependent largely upon the moisture and temperature of the curing room. These cannot always be regulated with exactness; and hence, much of this type of cheese is not of first quality, and must be sold for a low price. While such fancy cheeses, as Camembert, bring fifty cents and upward per pound, and the yield from the milk is much greater than with the hard type of cheese, yet the difficulties of successful manufacture are such as to make success less easily attained than with the other types. There are many other kinds of soft cheese that depend for their ripening upon factors similar to those concerned in the ripening of Camembert; most of them are, however, of small importance from a commercial standpoint.