The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning. Tuesday, May 28, 1889.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 304, 28 May 1889, Page 2

The Gisborne Standard AND COOK COUNTY GAZETTE Published every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday Morning.

Tuesday, May 28, 1889.

Be just and fear not; Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s. Thy God’s, and truth’s.

In a letter to a Christchurch paper Mr Alexander Beck, M.E., Belgium Consul, refers to the reported new invention for preserving food. From the writer’s tone one would be led to discount very much the anticipated benefits to be derived from the new method. Mr Beck denies the assertion that scientific men are unable to ascertain how the process acts. Some poultry and eggs, treated by the new process, were brought to New Zealand by the Coptic, and to this reference is made which throws doubts on the scheme. Mr Beck writes:—

Men like Professors Atfield, Redwood, Tidey, Jupp, &0., are certainly aware of the power of any antiseptic, especially of the sulphurous and arsenious acid. Our Museum and Universities are full of preparations and anatomical pieces or subjects preservedin that way. The direct action of any antiseptic is to destroy or rather to suspend the vitality of thosemicrobes and miasmas which originate the fermentation followed by putrefaction, so quickly increased by the help of outside insects. ... I wanted to see the preserved things, and taste an egg, if possible. I wished to , take the temperature of the room, to see if the eggs had any signature, with the number and date of invoice marked on the shell, as I have suggested to the Agricultural and Pastoral Association of Canterbury should be done for a competition of preserved eggs at the next November show, I Was received with the courtesy habitual to the officers of a White Star liner. The purser, Mr Bae, however, declined even to show me anything, and I must say was very reticent, I could not have even the name of the patentees. The gentleman knew who I was, and he had the articles I have published ou the subject of preservation. > . ■ Any antiseptic keeps ths meat in a more or less fleshy state, and unlesi the refrigerated spaces on board the ships are ten times enlarged to keep their actual number of caroates, the process is useless. The great advantage of the freezing is that hardened caroMaa can be piled like stones one over tho other without injury, caving spaas find labor in the refrigerated rooms. Meat preervefl by antiseptic, forwarded in that way, would be more or less exposed to heat |or dry fermentation in the centre of the piles : it would bo squashed. Unless a refrigerating power is added, the carcases must be separated one from the other if antiseptic is only used.

What Mr Beck says in a great measure discredits the new process of any great novelty, and shows that in practice it would be divested of many of the advantages which it appears to have in theory. But Mr Beck then goes on to give an opinion “ that the day is not distant when refrigerating will be effected by cheap chemicals instead of by cold air,” and then states “ that plans and details are already to hand for the establishment of the process.” Thus, while to an extent disillusionising us in the one respect, our curiosity is still further piqued. Until there is something more definite before us we must be content to wait in expectancy.