tend to the formation of the compounds that give the flavor to cheese. In normal cheese tyrosin, oxyphenylethylamin, arginin, histidin, lysin, guanidin, putrescin and ammonia were found as end products of the proteolysis. The investigations indicate that the formation of secondary amido compounds and ammonia are due to the action of a biological factor, not yet determined.
The conditions affecting the chemical changes in the ripening process have been worked out in detail, and among these the favorable effect of low temperatures has been demonstrated. The latter is entirely opposed to the views heretofore held by practical cheese makers, who have avoided too great cold, believing it to result in a bitter, inferior product. The advantages of cold curing are shown by an extensive experiment recently concluded by the National Department of Agriculture in cooperation with the experiment stations in Wisconsin and New York. About 500 cheeses representing a great variety of makes were cured at temperatures of 40°, 50° and 60° F., whereas the temperature of ordinary curing rooms runs up to 70° and often higher in summer. The improvement in quality of the cold-cured product was evident in the flavor and texture and in its higher market value. The loss of moisture in cold curing was very much less, resulting in diminished loss from shrinkage; moreover, the cheese can be held a long time at low temperatures without impairment of quality. These investigations will tend to revolutionize cheese making in several respects, by furnishing a scientific basis for it in place of the purely empirical rules and traditions which formerly prevailed, and will simplify the process, rendering possible a more uniform product of improved quality.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS.
We regret to record the death of Professor Karl Alfred von Zittel, the eminent paleontologist of the University of Munich; of M. Proust, professor of hygiene of the University of Paris and inspector general of the Sanitary Service; of Dr. Eugene Askenasy, honorary professor of plant physiology at the University of Heidelberg; and of Mr. Gurdon Trumbull, the artist and ornithologist, of Hartford, Conn.
Mr. John Morley will deliver the principal address at the opening of the Technical Institution, founded at Pittsburg by Mr. Carnegie, in the autumn of 1904.—Sir William Ramsay, of London, will give a course of lectures during the summer session at the University of California on 'The Constituents of the Atmosphere and the Emanations from Radium.'
Dr. G. W. Hill, of Nyack, N. Y., has been elected a corresponding member in the section of astronomy of the Paris Academy of Sciences.—Professor George W. Hough, of Northwestern University, has been elected an associate member of the Royal Astronomical Society.—The sixtieth birthday of Dr. Robert Koch was celebrated on December 11. A portrait bust was unveiled in the Institute for Infectious Diseases, Berlin, a museum for bacteriology was established and a Festschrift is in press.
Mr. Shyamaji Krishnavarma, of India, has offered $5,000 to Oxford University to establish a lectureship in honor of Herbert Spencer to be known as the Spencer Lectureship.
The Nobel prizes, each of the value of about $40,000, were awarded in Christiania, on December 10. The prize in physics was divided between M. Becquerel and M. and Mme. Curie, of Paris. The prize in chemistry was awarded to Professor Arrhenius, of Stockholm; the prize in medicine to Dr. Finsen, of Copenhagen, and the prize in literature to Dr. Björnstjerne Bjornsen, of Christiania.—The prize for French contributions to science given by M. Osiris through the Paris Press Association has been divided between Mme. Curie and M. Branly. Mme. Curie receives 60,000 francs for her work on radium and M. Branly 40,000 francs for his work in connection with wireless telegraphy.
