CONDENSED CORRESPONDENCE.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 26, 30 July 1898, Page 2

CONDENSED CORRESPONDENCE.

$ The Railway Time-tables. — "Worried to Death" — a visitor who is delighted with, this colouy and hopes to make it his horne — writes complaining of the time-tables in use on the New Plymouth and Woodville aud the Wanganui lines, and declares the tables to be " veritable quagmires of mystery and confusion," and likens them to the English Bradshaw Guide, which is a " veritable .terror." lie asks the authorities for the adoption of a more simple system. Hj'gienic Milk. — T. H. Hustwick writes a lengthy review upon the interview between the Secretary of the Wellington Fresh Food and Ice Company and the Post representative, and says the scheme propounded therein is an ambitious one. He hesitates to take as gospel all the utterances of the Secretary, and asks what Mr. Einn means by the expression " chemically pure milk ?" To a chemist such a designation conveys no moaning, for it is a contradiction of terms. "Physiologically .pure" would have conveyed a definite meaning. The filtering arrangements may be ingenious, but how the "three layers of graded gravel and several folds of canvas " are to be kept absolutely clean and free from the germs j which cause change in milk requires explanation. All things considered, this method does not appear to be much of an advance upon the old Swiss plan of running the milk through layers of fresh and well-^ washed pine twigs. The location of the' factory in Cornhill-street may be open to question — a narrow hack street, through which the water-cart does ' not pass, and exposed to the dust-laden winds of a large town, besides being shut in by tall and old buildings, is not an ideal site in which to carry on a business where free circulation of fresh, pure air and abundant sunshine are important factors. A further objection may also he found in storing butcher's meat in close contiguity to milk. With regard to the cooking of milk, it is well to i - emember that boiled milk is altogether a different article from raw milk — I that while it is undoubtedly freed from living germs by boiling, its constitution has been so altered that it caunot fulfil the same purposes as the uncooked article. In I pasteurisation or sterilisation a lower temperature — 160-180deg F. — with a longer exposure is required to bring about the destruction of germ life, but even then some alteration takes place, for it has happened that infants fed continuously on sterilised milk have suffered from scurv3% which has readily been cured by a reversion to the raw article. It is a mistake, therefore, to look upon either boiled or sterilised milk as a panacea for infantile ills, or as a perfect food for their sustenance ; discretion iv their use must be observed.