101. The COMMON OX (Bos taurus domesticus, Fig. 29) is characterised by having rounded horns which curve outward, and a loose skin or dewlap beneath the throat.
The male is called bull, the female cow, and the young one calf.
This animal, in a wild state, is the bison (Fig. 15) which is found in the marshy forests of Poland and Lithuania.
It is almost impossible to enumerate all the benefits that mankind derive from these admirable animals. In many countries nearly the whole labour of agriculture is performed by oxen, and, after this service is over, they are fatted and slaughtered for food. It is well known in what estimation they were formerly held in Egypt; they furnished even deities to the superstitious inhabitants of that country. From their supplying the Gentoos with milk, butter, and cheese, their favourite food, those people bear for them a veneration so great that nothing on earth would induce them to slay one of them.
In nearly all eastern countries oxen are employed in treading out corn. By the Caffres of the Cape of Good Hope they are used as beasts of draught and burden. When Mr. Barrow and his suite went into the country of the Caffres, the king, who was at a distance from his usual residence, was sent to; and he is stated to have arrived riding upon an ox full gallop, attended by five or six of his people.
To the milk of the cow we are indebted for several important articles of human subsistence. It is adapted to every state and age of the body, but particularly to the feeding of infants after they have been weaned. Skimmed milk, or that which remains after the cream has been taken off, is employed, in considerable quantity, by wine and spirit merchants, for clarifying or fining down turbid white wine, arrack, and weak spirits.
Nearly all the cheese that is consumed in the British islands is made of cow's milk. For this purpose the milk is curdled by mixture with a substance called rennet, which is prepared from the inner membrane of a calf's stomach; and the curd, thus formed, after being cleared of the whey or watery part contained in the milk, is collected together, pressed, and dried for use.
The richest of all the English kinds of cheese is that called Stilton cheese. This, however, is not, as its name would import, made in the town of Stilton, but in various parts of Huntingdonshire, and in Leicestershire, Rutland, and Northamptonshire. Stilton cheese is indebted, for its excellence, both to the rich pastures on which the cows are fed, and to the peculiar process by which it is made. It is not sufficiently mellowed for use until two years old, and is not in a state to be eaten till it is decayed, blue, and moist. To hasten the ripening of Stilton cheeses, it is not unusual to place them in buckets, and to cover these with horse-dung. Cheshire is famous for its cheese, which is generally much salter and more smart upon the palate than any other English kind. In Wiltshire and Gloucestershire much cheese of rich and excellent quality is made.
The neighbourhood of Chedder, in the county of Somerset, produces a very admirable kind, which is little inferior in taste to Parmesan, and is supposed to owe its peculiar quality to the cows feeding in rich pastures, and particularly on the flote fescue grass (Festuca fluitans), with which many of those pastures abound. Cottenham cheese is a soft white cheese, for which we are chiefly indebted to a small village of that name situated a few miles from Cambridge. In the neighbourhood of Bath and York, and also in Lincolnshire, a rich and excellent kind of cream cheese is made. In Scotland a species of cheese is produced which has long been known and celebrated under the name of Dunlop cheese, from a parish of that name in Ayrshire, in the neighbourhood of which it is principally made.
Of foreign kinds of cheese the most celebrated is Parmesan. This is made of ewes' milk, or of a mixture of ewes' or goats' milk with that of the cow. We receive it from various parts of Italy, and also from other countries, although the name would import it to be made exclusively in the neighbourhood of Parma. In the district of Gruyere, a small town in the canton of Friburg in Switzerland, a well-known kind of cheese of large size is made, which goes by that name. Gouda cheese is famous in Holland. The common Dutch cheeses are of globular shape, and each three or four pounds in weight. They are prepared in the same manner as Cheshire cheese, with the exception that, instead of rennet, the Dutch use spirit of vitriol (sulphuric acid). Hence this kind of cheese has a sharp and saline taste, which is said to exempt it from the depredations of mites. Green Swiss cheese has a strong and peculiar flavour derived from the fragrant powder of melliot (Trifolium melilotus officinalis). This cheese is, however, to many persons, very disagreeable.