SEALING AN EGG

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1929, Page 12

SEALING AN EGG

AN IMPORTANT DISCOVERY. There lives in Bath a wonderful old man of Huguenot descent aged 92, who was the means of taking to England the knowledge of the method for preserving eggs. He is Mr Kinard De la Bere, and though he does not hear quite as well as he used to do he is still keenly alive to all that goes on in the world around him, as he was in his youth, when he published a book of natural history with his own delightful illustrations of animal life. As a young man Mr De la Bere visited America, where he heard for the first time of a wonderful discovery, made by the Technical Institute of Agriculture in that country, of silicate of soda for the preservation of newlaid eggs, resulting in the preparation familiar to everybody under its name of water-glass. He realised what a fine thing for poultry farmers, and for agriculture as a whole, this discovery would be, and he lost no time in introducing it to the British Isles, where it was enthusiastically welcomed. Silicate of soda attaches itself to the shell of an egg, and seals up the pores so that eggs can be kept quite well for a long period after they have been in water-glass for a few weeks. Orders began to pour in from all quarters, and in one year, Mi* De la Bere supplied as much as a thousand tons of the material. There came a letter to him from as far away as the Falkland Islands asking for a supply of the preparation. “The writer had no money, nor any means of sending money,” said the old gentleman to one who called to see him, “so he sent me the only thing he could, a lot of the Falkland Island early stamps, foi’ which he hoped we could send him a small quantity.” < There is not much, if anything, that the most up-to-date poultry farmer could teach to this virile old man of 92.' He has had many interests in his life, and his love for natural history has been a lasting one.