TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LIII, Issue 9522, 15 September 1896, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The great periodical The Lambeth gathering of the heads of Conference. the Anglican Church,

known as the Lambeth Conference, takes place next year, and assumes additional interest from the fact that that year •will be the thirteen hundredth anniversary of the landing in England of St. Augustine, who founded the see of Canterbury. Except for this fact the Conference would not take place until 1898, but the Archbishop of Canterbury is naturally desirous of commemorating so historic an incident by having as large a representative gathering of the Bishops of the Church of England as possible. From what the Primate of New Zealand, Bishop Cowie, recently said to an Auckland interviewer it seems very probable that the approaching Conference will be the most largely attended that has yet been held. To tlie firat gathering of this kind, held in 1867, 144 Bishops were invited, at the next, in 1878, the number had increased to 173, - and for the one held in 1838 211 received invitations. The number of Bishops in the Anglican episcopate lias increased to something like 250, aud of these it is expected that fully 200 will be present. Four of the six New Zealand Bishops wiil go, besides the Bishop of Melanesia. Bishop Wallis, of Wellington, and Bishop Nevill, of Dunedin, will look after the interests of the Church in the colony during the absence of their brother Bishops. As to the matters to be considered by the conference Bishop Cowie stated that one was the desirability of assigning the title of Archbishop to the Primates and Metropolitans of tlie various provinces, and the relation in which the Primates of colonial province, stand to the Primate of All England. "It has b_.n, for instance, suggested,'' said the Primate *' that the Bishops of colonial provinces should take an oath of allegiance to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Some of the English Bishops seem to ace no

objection to this, but any such proposal would meet with the strongest opposition iv New Zealand, and from many Bishops in other parts .of the world. ... Itwould be a serious step to give any kind of supremacy to the Archbishop of Canterbury beyond that of honour." It has been suggested that Bishops attendiug the Conference should agree to recommend to their several provinces that some kind of a central Court of Appeal should be set up in London to deal authoritatively with questions affecting the whole Anglican communion. So far, however, as the Primate knew, the colonial Bishops did not see how far this could be carried out, as it might interfere with the independence of the various self-governing churches in communion with the Churoh of England. The Lambeth Conference, though so important a gathering, has no legislative power, Bishop Cowie describing it as a friendly consultation for the good of the whole Anglican Church. Committees were appointed to consider and report upon the various questions brought up, and if their recommendations were adopted they were embodied in an encyclical letter, which was sent to all the Anglican churches in the world.

A London medical newsNew Zealand paper, thp Hospital, rev. cently instituted a series British of experiments into the Mutton. value of colonial frozen mutton compared with that of English meat. Tlie popular misconceptions regarding frozen mutton were summarised as follows :—(1) That foreign meat is more wasteful than English, that it diminishes in weight more in proportion during the cooking process, has more refuse parts which cannot be consumed, and less dripping and gravy ; (2) that foreign meat contains a smaller proportion of nutritive qualities, is inferior altogether in food value, and is harder of digestion : (3) that foreign meat yields very unsatisfactory results when used in the preparation of beef tea; that the liquid is lighter in colour than that made from English meat, and contains a larger proportion of gelatine and less albumen. With regard to the first point, the general wastefulness of foreign (colonial) meat compared with English meat, two legs of mutton were procured, of nearly equal weight, and were baked for an equal length of time in ovens equally heated. One was English grown and killed, and cost lOd per lb, the other was best Canterbury frozen mutton, costing 8d per lb. Both joints were then carved in slices suitable for hospital patients, and the amount of bone, waste after carving, dripping, and gravy carefully weighed. The Home-grown leg of mutton gave 520z of slices for hospital use, the frozen 48oz, so that the Canterbury leg, which was Boz lighter on delivery, gave within 4oz as much good meat. Each gave the same weight of bone and waste, 370z. The New Zealand leg gave 15oz of dripping to the English one's 12oz. Tlie statement that frozen mutton loses more gravy than fresh meat was not borne out by the experiment, for lOfoz escaped from the Home-grown joint, and only 9£oz from the frozen meat. "Contrary to. expectation," remarks the Hospital, "it was found that the EngHsh meat lost more in proportion during baking—viz. ,2lb 7oz against 21b loz." "It is clear," it adds, " even from one experiment that the assertion that frozen meat is essentially and invariably more wasteful than English cannot be supported."

Experiments were then Other made to test the digestiExperiments. bility of Scotch and colonial mutton. The tests were conducted by a doctor, by means of artificial digestion, on samples of Scotch, Canterbury crossbred, and Australian merino mutton, and showed exceedingly little difference in the qualities of the several varieties of meat. " The amount of digestion in these experiments," said the doctor, "is very nearly the same for each kind of meat, and is proportional to the amount of matter capable of digestion present as measured by the quantity of nitrogen existing in each kind. The freezing of the foreign meat seems to have slightly reduced the amount of water present, so that the foreign (colonial) meat, weight for weight, has a greater amount of food constituents if the fat be taken into account." "Little comment," adds the Hospital, " is necessary on the above results. The difference between the English and foreign meat is so slight as again to suggest the probability that, had all the samples been English or all foreign, taken from different animals, the results could hardly have worked out moro evenly

The digestibility of the meat is all important from the invalid's standpoint, and remembering that foreign meat is very commonly indeed used for the patients' diets, it is very reassuring to find that the freezing process does not to any appreciable extent render it less easy of assimilation or constitute a drawback to its use for persons of feeble digestive powers. That foreign meat is not unpalatable may be judged from the fact that it is consumed in more than one institution, and pronounced excellent by persons who never doubt that it is home-grown and killed, while experiments made on those who believe their judgment in the matter to be reliable have proved that after cooking the process of discrimination is never a certainty." It is to be hoped that the results of these experiments, which are being extensively circulated at Home, will do much to benefit the trade, affording as they do authoritative proof of the excellence of New Zealand meat.