WONDERFUL—IF TRUE !

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXIV, Issue 8334, 10 April 1889, Page 2

WONDERFUL— IF TRUE !

In another column we repriut from the Sydney Morning Herald an account of a wonderful new meat preservative furnished by the London correspondent of that journal. If one quarter of what is claimed for it bo true, it will simply effect a revolution in the world's trade in quickly perishable goods, such as meat, fruit, and vegetables. Freeziug is to be dispensed with, and the great cost of meat freezing t establishments on shore and refrigerating machinery on board shin, is to be done away with ! Some fluid, potent to arrest putrefactive decay is apparently used, and the meat or frnit to be preserved has simply to be dipped in it for an hour or two to ensure its keeping for three months or more ! Ten shillings is named as the cost of preserving a bullock, and the time occupied is only three hours ! If this astounding account is believed, the preservative medium leaves no taste or smell, does not sodden meat, or soften fruit, but the article subjected to its operation can travel round the world and arrive back again at its starting point as fresh as if it had just come from the butcher's shambles or the horticnlturalist's garden ! l<'ish is to be kept indefinitely, and it is incidentally suggested that cargoes of rabbits, packed in the hold of ships like sardines in a box, would prove a profitable investment to the squatter now driven to his wits' end to devise means to exterminate bunny. Wonderful ! But is it true, or has someone bees hoaxing the writer ? We fear sadly that the last-suggested solution is the true one. We will not £0 so far as to say that what is promised is beyond the reach of science. The last twenty years have seen so many apparently impossible things accomplished that he would be a fool who would attempt to put a limit to the point where science cannot overcome natural obstacles— or, to put it more correctly, where one natural force, artificially produced, cannot be used to counteract other natural forces. But we are not prepared lo accept this reported new discovery without a very large grain of salt. We hope sincerely that it will all turn ont correct— but when we see it we will believe it.