MISCELLANY.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XIV, Issue 758, 12 April 1884, Page 3

MISCELLANY.

A STRANGE SCENE ON THE SUSSEX COAST. Tho Simla has evidently broken up, for hrge quantities of her cargo have been washed ashore on tho coast east of .Brighton, between Blackpool and Seaford. Pianos, boots, furniLure, jewellery, timber, casks of linseed oil, and largo quantities of casks of Burton ale, wine, and spirits formed part of the wreckage. The roughs of Brighton and the neighboring villages soon got scent of the plunder, and assembled in hundreds on the bench. Not content with carrying off the wreckage, notwithstanding tho presence of the coastguard, many of the crowd broached the casks of wine, ale, and spirits, and a scene of drunkenness ensued that is terrible to read of. Men and women were seen lying on the beach helplessly drunk, and several were found in such a dangerous condition that they had to be removed to the county hospital. Even small boys were sent home in carts hopelessly intoxicated. The following sickening account of the orgie is supplied by a visitor to the beach :—" I met groups of men, women, and even boys rolling back to Brighton, every now and then falling in the road, and all along the bank at the side of the road were men, and women too, stretched insensibly drunk. But the worst and most sickening sight I ever saw was at Ovingdean Gap, where there are some steps down to the beach. The people, of course, were not satisfied with the bottles which they reserved in their pockets, but they broke open some 30 gallon casks and drank out of their hats, and afterwards were lying on the grass, some, I am afraid, dying (one did die) and others nearly so. On the beach wore several people, mad drunk ; some would lie down, and others would try and crawl to the casks to get more drink ; and others, again, fell with their faces on the shingle, and were streaming in blood. The police could do nothing with 200 or 300 roughs." FROZEN MEAT. Mr Mattbieu "Williams, author of the articles on " The Chemistry of Cookery," which appears in Mr Proctor's paper (Knowledge), in one of those articles contributes tho following intensely interesting remarks on frozen meat Before leaving the snbject of animal food, I may say a few words on the latest, and perhaps the greatest, triumph of science in reference to food supply—i.e., the successful solution of tho great problem of preserving fresh meat for an almost indefinite length of time. It has long been known tint meat which is frozen remains fresh. Tho Aberdeen whalers were in the habit of feasting their friends on returning home on joints that were taken out fresh from Aberdeen and kept frozen during a long Arctic voyage. In Norway game is shot at the end"of autumn, and kept in a frozen state for consumption during the whole winter and far into the spring. The early attempts to apply the freezing process for the carriage of fresh meat from South America and Australia by using ice, or freezing mixtures of ice and salt, failed; but now all the difELsultios are ovcrcomo by a simple application of the great principle of the conservation of energy, whereby tho burning of coal may be made to produce a degree of cold proportionate to the amount of heat it gives out in burning. Carcases of sheep are thereby frozen to stony hardness irrmediately they are slaughtered in New Zealand and Australia and then packed inclose refrigerated cars, carried to the ship, and there stowed in chambers refrigerated by the same means, and thus brought to England in the same state of stony hardness as that originally produced. I dined to-day on one of the legs of a sheep that I bought a week ago, and which was grazing at the Antipodes three months before. I prefer it to any English mutton ordinarily obtainable The grounds of this prefe-ence will be understood when I explain that English farmers who manufacture mutton as a primary product kill their sheep as soon as they are full grown, when a year old or less. They cannot afford to feed a sheep for two years longer merely to improve its flavor without adding to its weight. Country gentlemen, who do not care for expense, occasionally regale their friends on a haunch or saddle of three year-old mutton, as a rare and costly luxury. The Antipodean grazers are woolgrowers. .Until lately, mutton was merely used as manure, and even now it is but a secondary product. Tho wool crop improves year by year until the sheep is three or four years old ; therefore, it is not slaughtered until this age is attained, and thus the sheep sent to England are similar to those of the country squire and such as the English farmer could not send to market under eighteen-penco per pound. There is, however, one drawback ; but I have tested it thoroughly, having supplied my own table during the last six months with no other mutton than that f-om New Zealand, and find it so trifling as to be imperceptible unless critically looked for. It is simply that, id thawing, a small quantity of the juice of the meat oozes out. This is more than compensated by the superior richness and fulness of flavor ot the meat itself, which is much darker in color than, young mutton. 4 —— FOREST TREE PLANTING-. The following regulations under the Forest Trees Planting Encouragement Acts are gazetted :—].-. Tue planting in respect of which a grant of land under the Act is claimed need not be in one block, but may be in several blocks on the st:me property. £. The land planted must be securely fenced, and must have been devoted to planting for at leant two years. 3. The trees must be in a vigorous and healthy state when the grant of laud is applied for. 4. The <r •»* may lie

"""" 500 per acre. 5. Tlie trees must bo of an average height of 2ft, except in the case ot gum, wattle, poplar, or willow, which must be of an average height of 4ffc. G. So soon as the land is fenced and the trees planted, a report must be sent to the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the P'-ovincial district in which Lhe lands are situate, who will cause inspection of the same to be made, from the date of which, if duly certified, the two yours will bo calculated. 7. The amount of the land order to be issued under authority of section 4of the Forest Trees Planting Encouragement Act Amendment Act, 1872, in respect of every acre of land planted, shall be £4. 8. The fulfilment of the conditions above prescribed shall be ascertained, and shall bo certified to in the form annexed by an officer appointed by the Governor, who shaii forward tlio same to the Secretary for Crown Innds. Upon the receipt of sucli certificate, the Governor may either issue his own certificate to the Waste Lands Board, or he way, if he think fit, cause further inquiry to be made into the facts of the case. 9. No person shall be entitled to receivo an order under the Forest Trees Planting Act Amendment Act, 1872, unless ho shall, at. the time a claim therefor, produce to and deposit with the Commissioner of Crown Lands for the provincial district in which the lands are situate a plan of the land planted with trees in respect of which ho claims such land order, showing the marks or numbers by which such land is known on tJis record maps in the Crown Lands Office of the said district. The applicant shall also produce and leave with such officer a statutory declaration made by him that to the best of his belief tho boundaries and dimensions of such land are correctly delineated on such plan, and that no land order has been previously granted to any person in respect of the pianting tho land described in such plan with trees. A MODEL CITY. The following particulars as to p. modern Utopia are given in the Pall Mall Gazette : —" In 1880 the rapidly extending business of the Pullman Palacj Car Company necessitated the erection of new buildings, and Mr George M. Pull- . man found an opportunity of carrying a fa/orite theory of his into'effect. He had soen at Chicago the misery of great cities,' and he determined that his employees | should be sared from it. He saw ' nothing in the enterprise which was not a matter of finance pure and simple and his general principle was the equally simple one that ' there is a great deal of good in human nature,' and that' men are the creatures of their surroundings.' Mr Pullman was convinced that it would be a good investment to build a town to order. Built accordingly the town was, on land purchased 14 miles from Chicago ; and there in Pullman town all the Pullman cars are made, and all Pullman's employees, over 2000 in number, live. Mr Pullman has not been disappointed in any respect. _ It is often said' that the poor prefer dirt to cleanliness, and ' some of tho families moving into the nice new cottages with their dirty old traps ' made Mr Pullman feel a little discouraged at first, but'it was not long, before in the windows of these same houses pretty flowers were visible, and the appearance of the inmates gradually improved." A stranger arriving at Pullman puts up at an hotel managed by one of Mr Pullman's employees, visits a theatre where all tho attendants are in. Mr Pullman's service, drinks water and burns gas which Mr Pullman's water and gas works supply, hires one of his outfits from the manager of Pullman's livery stable, visits a school in which tho children of Mr Pullman's employees are taught by other employees, gets a bill changed at Mr Pullman's bank, is unable to make a purchase of any kind savo from some tenant of Mr Pullman's, and at night is guarded by a fire department, every member of which, from the chief down, is in Mr Pull .nan's service. There are no policemen or constables, no justice's court, no aldermen, no public functionaries of any description, but, as no brrach of the peace has ever occurred, Mr Pullman's benevolent despotism has a very clean record. Mr Pullman would object, however, to the imputation of benevolence. ' Our only aim,' he told an interviewer the other day,' was to realise G per cent, on the investment; we have done that, and we are satisfied. I have little of the sentimental,' he added, 'in my nature, and I abhor abstruse problems.' "