venient height for loading cans into a wagon and should have a tight floor sloping slightly away from the building, with cement under the platform. The cement should be solid, smooth, and extend out far enough to catch all slops and carry them into the drain. Nothing sooner produces unpleasant flavors around a creamery than milk soaking into the ground and continually stirred up by horses and wagons. Such a condition is unnecessary, unsanitary and a common source of trouble.

Cement floors are always to be recommended in place of wood. It is impossible to keep wood floors in a sanitary condition for any length of time. They absorb the milk and whey and are difficult to clean.

Skim-milk tanks, whey vats, buttermilk tanks, pasteurizers, skimmilk weighers, etc., should always be placed so they can be easily cleaned every day.

CHEESE FACTORY CONDITIONS.

The average condition of creameries in our State is better so far as sanitation is concerned than cheese factories, and the prevailing method of caring for the whey is largely responsible for this.

The whey problem may not be the most important, but it surely is the most prominent. It will come to the road to meet you, stay by during your visit, and if the wind is in a favorable direction will accompany you on your journey down the road when you depart.

Those undesirable flavors in cheese can largely be attributed to the whey because a proper method of handling whey requires suitable drainage, and proper drainage eliminates the factory slops and their attendant evils. The cheese factory presents a different phase from the creamery, because any method of handling whey must take into consideration the fact that when whey is ready to leave the vat it must leave at once, and more rapidly than milk passes through a separator, and no chances can be taken on a stoppage of the flow. A pump or a steam jet is too uncertain for such a place, and gravity should be used to take the whey from the vat, no matter how it is handled later.

Experience in elevating whey leads to advice against any plan to elevate direct from the vat, or from any small receptacle. Theoretically the whey can be handled by pump or jet the same as skim-milk, by running off part of the whey early. Practically one would sometimes get caught by some defect in the pumping apparatus, and with a fast working curd from which the whey must be taken at once. The whey cistern is also unsatisfactory. Experience has shown that almost invariably a factory using a whey cistern has trouble with off flavored milk. A whey cistern under the factory or under ground cannot be reached by air and sunshine and the flavors such whey carries to the patron's milk can are a constant source of trouble. A factory situated on high ground with good, natural drainage, could use a tank with the top as high as any ordinary wagon, but on level ground that plan does not work.

THE ELEVATED TANK.

The most practical solution of the whey problem on level ground is the elevated tank. It is a sign of progress denoting an effort to secure

better sanitary conditions; removing the very unpleasant task of dipping whey and retaining a larger part of its feeding value. The elevated tank permits the air and sunshine to get all around it, in it, and under it. It is more easily cleaned, and does not receive the wash water and floor drainage.

A modern plan is a cement tank-not a cistern-holding not less than ten barrels circular in form-five or six feet deep-with the top high enough to keep out surface drainage. Placed four feet outside the building in sunlight and air. Have tile with cemented joints from the factory to the tank, with a cut off leading to the drain so the slops and wash water can be run into the drain and not into the whey tank.

Whey troughs in a factory are a nuisance. A well built gutter with cut-off and traps will carry the whey to the tank and slops to the drain and be more easily kept clean. About fifty feet away from the factory place a galvanized iron tank, size depending on the amount of milk handled, elevated enough to draw from the bottom of the tank into cans on the patrons' wagons.

Now place a jet pump of liberal capacity (or a steam pump) over the lower tank with the suction pipe near the bottom. Run a pipe across to the upper tank; place the jet pump at the highest point of the pipe so it will lift the whey and have a free discharge. Then connect the upper tank with the drain so it can be easily cleaned out, and your whey need not become a source of soil and air pollution.

Such a plan permits taking the whey from the cheese vat as rapidly as necessary. The lower tank provides an emergency reservoir in case the pump becomes temporarily disabled. The pump takes the whey to the upper tank, from which the patrons receive it free from slops or other undesirable contents. The lower tank can be washed out, the water run to the upper one, then to the drain.

Drainage connections are made an important feature in this arrangement and purposely so. No factory or creamery is complete, and no method of skim-milk or whey disposal will be satisfactory except in connection with a good drainage system, for no method will eliminate all slops in handling those by-products, and without good drainage that waste whey, milk and tank washings soak into the ground and smell loud and long.

If natural drainage has been overlooked in locating the plant, then the septic tank must be installed. The question of cost has no right to enter into the problem, because the cost is so reasonable as to be of little consequence when the benfits are considered. In fact no one handling a food product has a right legally or morally to plead economy as an off-set to necessary sanitary equipment. The entire expense of tanks, pump and pipe connections will not exceed seventy dollars. Better built and better equipped factories are a necessity if our cheese men keep up with the pace made by our creameries, and if they meet the demands of the public for pure, clean and otherwise wholesome food.

SEPTIC TANK.

The purpose of the septic tank is to provide for the disposal of creamery or factory sewage, where no public sewers are provided, or where there is not a natural water run, by allowing bacteria to consume the organic matter of the sewage before it is finally disposed of. It will not take the place of a drain, for some drainage must be supplied to secure a proper working of the septic tank. The septic tank is installed for the purpose of reducing the sewage from the creamery or factory to the condition of ordinary water, thus permitting its discharge into an ordinary drain or ditch, without danger of polluting the atmosphere with foul odors of decomposition. A septic tank is not expensive, costing but little more than any ordinary cistern, and if properly and carefully constructed will prove of untold value to a creamery or cheese factory that is located in a section where drainage direct into running water is not possible.

Below a septic tank is illustrated, showing plan of construction and indicating plan of working. The tank may be constructed of ordinary brick, cemented over on the inside to render perfectly water tight, or it may be made, and possibly preferably, of cement and grout throughout. The circular form of cistern or tank is the simplest and affords no corners to fill up with sediment. The size depends on the output of sewage from the creamery or cheese factory for a period of four or five days. To build, excavation should be made as for any ordinary underground cistern, and deep enough so that the entire tank may be covered with at least one foot of surface soil. The plan is illustrated in figure 1. It should have three apartments, separated by water tight partitions, preferably of cement. Cistern No. 1 should have a capacity great enough to hold the sewage from a two days' run at the creamery. Cistern No. 2 and cistern No. 3 should each be sufficiently large to hold the creamery output of sewage for one day. This gives a total a capacity in the septic tank of four days' output from the creamery. The details of construction are ilustrated in figure 2.

MOVEMENT OF SEWAGE THROUGH THE TANK.

Beginning with the creamery the sewage passes out one corner or side into a drain, the size of which is sufficient to carry off the sewage in a short time, directly into cistern No. 1 of the septic tank. Between the creamery and cistern No. 1 is a trap in the conducting pipe which is retained full of liquid material that does not syphon off into the tank. This trap or goose-neck prevents the backward rush of sewer gas into creamery from cistern No. 1. The outlet of the conductor from the creamery into cistern No. 1 is but a short distance below the surface of the liquid in the tank when same is full. Inlet A should be at one end of cistern No. 1. The two days' supply of sewage falls into cistern No. 1 and when the third days' supply enters this same cistern, a discharge takes place at B, figures 1 and 2. The outlet of cistern No. 1 at B, as

shown by the diagram, starts near the middle of the tank. It has been shown that the liquid is clearest at this point. Therefore, if the drainage leaves the center of the tank as at B, neither the sediment at the bottom nor the foul material at the top is removed.

Cistern No. 1 empties as at B, figure No. 1, at the opposite end from which the sewage enters. This provides for a movement of sewage through the whole length of the cistern and prevents any portion of it becoming stagnant. The opening into cistern No. 2 is near the top and an inch or so above the opening in cistern No. 1. This prevents the uncovering of the inlet in cistern No, 1 at A. The outlet of cistern No. 2 at C, figure 1, is again at the opposite end of that cistern from its inlet B, and is again taken from the center or middle portion of the tank, as shown in figure 2. The outlet from cistern No. 3, figure 2, runs direct to the drain. The sewage on leaving cistern No. 3 into the drain is, as will be seen, over four days old and should be free from any injurious material in suspension. Samples of liquid taken from a well constructed septic tank, at its outlet into the drain, have kept for a considerable length of time without showing any evidence of putrefaction. The pipes conducting the sewage from one cistern to another in the tank may conveniently be made of lead pipe or galvanized iron of about three inches diameter. These pipes are sufficiently large to prevent being clogged by any solid matter that may get in. The tank is covered over on top by means of heavy plank set closely together or cement, with earth covered over the top, making air tight fittings. Directly over the center part of the tank is a two or three inch gas pipe, opening diectly into the tank and carried up above the ground, high above the factory or above any other dwelling that may be in the immediate vicinity. This provides for the carrying away of decomposition odors due to bacterial action inside the tank.

Leading into the tank from above or from one side should be a small air inlet as at H, which will cause the successful working of the vent pipe E, figure 2. Connected with the sewer pipe leading from the creamery to the septic tank is another pipe F, figure 2, leading directly to the drain. This is connected with the sewer pipe leading to the tank by means of a shut-off valve, so arranged that when the milk drippings, etc., are passing into the tank nothing passes along this waste pipe into the drain, and when the wash water, cooling water, etc., is being removed from the creamery, by reversing the shut-off valve, this passes directly into the drain without going through the septic tank. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, if all the wash water, cooling water, etc., passed into the septic tank, the liquid would never be allowed to remain long enough inside the cistern in the tank to provide for a complete wasting away of the material by bacteria; and second, the entrance of a large amount of cold water into the tank prevents the temperature therein rising sufficiently high to keep in a flourishing condition a sufficient number of bacteria to consume the organic matter there present. The principle of the use of the septic tank is that the bacteria present in the milk gradually accumulate in large quantities in the three cisterns, and when the skim milk drippings, fat, etc., pass into the tank they are immediately attacked by these bacteria and converted into harmless products. The foul odors from this decomposition escape through the vent at the top.