After emerging from the final rolling process, the chocolate is stored up in heating chambers until it is ready to succeed to the moulding, prior to which, however, it must be freed from air and cut up into small portions. Until recently, it usually came next in a melangeur provided with a dish-shaped bed-stone made of granite, as illustrated in fig. 46, where it was kneaded and reduced to a uniform plasticity and heated to the temperature required for moulding. The melangeurs devoted to this purpose are now superseded by special tempering machines. A machine of this recent construction, used for working solid and semi-liquid material, is shown in fig. 47. The tank intended as a receptacle for the chocolate mass is in this case made of iron and, to facilitate cleaning, smooth in the interior. It runs in a water-bath, the supply in which can be controlled by steam or cold water. The granite runner is provided with a lifting device, admitting of the working up of material containing foreign ingredients like nuts, whole and fine-split. [Illustration: Fig. 47.] The mass is taken out of the machine in lumps, and in order that it may be reduced to a temperature suitable for the removal of air (about 26-32 ° C. on the outside) it is laid to cool on wooden, marble or iron tables. When this temperature is arrived at, large lumps of chocolate are introduced either into the air-extracting or the dividing machines. [Illustration: Fig. 48.] After the importance of the tempering processes had at length been recognised, inasmuch as the maintenance of the temperature prescribed is of immense influence on the chocolate subsequently produced, and it had on the other hand been ascertained that such machines as described above could not be absolutely relied upon, for the shaking tables involve an occasional excess of tempering, the idea of a machine which should completely and automatically perform this task was finally conceived. This new machine, given in fig. 48, and already differing from all other tempering machines in external appearance, ushers in an entirely fresh process respecting the _modus operandi_ prevailing in the present manufacture of chocolate, which does not fail to satisfy the highest expectations. It may be said to work continuously, for no matter what the temperature of chocolate passing into it may be, the material leaves the machine at the temperature desired within a lapse of one minute. According as more or less chocolate has to be turned over in the moulding department, the machine can be stopped or set in motion without detriment to its efficacy. Besides this, it cleans almost automatically, so that a quick change of quality is always possible. The special virtue of this machine is that it turns out the material with such a degree of homogeneity as has never before been known, making moulding at much higher temperatures a possibility. There is yet another side issue, namely a doubling of the life of the moulds,