LARD AS AN EXPORT.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 158, 15 March 1845, Page 8

LARD AS AN EXPORT.

[From a correspondent of the Sydney Herald.]

I am happy to see you advert to lard as an export, and put your readers in mind of the process newly discovered in America of converting it into oil and stearine, and, by a further process, the stearine into spermaceti. May we presume that the American spermaceti candles are made from the stearine of lard, and that this circumstance accounts for their being sold so much cheaper than English sperm candles ? The following is an extract from the London Journal of Commerce, of date the 28 th September, 1844:—

From the above prices current, it appears that New South Wales tallow rates the lowest in the market, on an average, except Cape. Lard from New South Wales appears to have been unknown ; but in another year we shall have accounts of the lard sent home lately, and no doubt see it in the list of London imports. Our maize, given to pigs in a ground state (thoroughly ground, mmd — merely crushed is wasteful), and given dry, with only pure water to drink in a separate trough, will produce a hard, white, and fine smelling lard, equal to London at 575. I speak from experience on this subject. To secure its being landed in an equally good state, it must be put into bladders, and salted in the melting with the clearest and finest salt. The settlers can buy bladders, both of sheep and bullocks, for a mere trifle, on applying for them at the boiling establishments. And bladders, especially small ones, would pack in a cask with a gentle squeezing, so as not to burst the bladder, with almost as much economy as regards space, as if the lard were poured into casks in a melted state. I would advise no lard to be put into casks. The leakage across the line will be great, and the lard will unavoidably acquire a bad smell from being more exposed to tbe bad air of the ship.

This colony being arid, the cultivation of esculents of all kinds is much more uncertain than in England. Turnips, for instance, are a most uncertain crop in the field. But maize in New South Wales, and barley to the south, may be grown ad infinitum ; and the crops being converted into lard, here is a living for our little farmers; for the London market will afford an inexhaustible consumption for lard. It is known that bladders are a hermetical seal, equal to the tins in which meats are preserved ; but tying of the bladder must be done with care.

Nothing shows the sort of farming and farmers who dwell in New South Wales, Port Phillip, and Van Diemen's Land, more than their sending their maize to Sydney to be sold at a shilling a bushel, and their potatoes at Is. 6d. and 2s. a hundredweight. 1 know a merchant who lately offered a potato dealer a small cargo of Van Diemen's Land potatoes for nothing, provided he would cart them off his premises. Is it not 8 1 range to see men calling themselves farmers, and at the same time not keeping pigs enough to feed their own families, much less to consume their maize and barley ? By the bye, a gentleman who has travelled in Spain, informs me that the peasants there, in sending their cured pork to market, cut off from the loin a portion of the fat, and render it into lard with the kidney and other offal fat of the pig. Such pork or bacon, so shaven of its fat, sells better than if all the fat were allowed to remain ; while the extra lard thus produced is of greater value than the meat, pound for pound. The farmer in England who breeds pigs on a large scale never fattens them, and he who fattens them does not breed them; but in this colony the farmer must do both : therefore, as a dairy is not an essential accompaniment, our colonial farmer, besides using the skim milk of his odd cow or two, must grow either potatoes or Swedish turnips. They ought to be steamed to convert the raw juice of the potatoes into starch, and that of the turnips into saccharine matter — a kind of sweet wort. Dry grain is not suitable for breeding sows, except in a moderate quantity to keep them in heart. I see in your journal of this morning a proposal to convert sheep-skins into packing cases for tallow. In the South of Europe they use dried skins for wine, and in South America bullock and horse hides as packing cases for everything. Now, if skins will hold wine, surely they will hold tallow. Your correspondent very pertinently suggests that the skins of sheep, when the latter are boiled down, might be got off the carcase by the same means as the natives skin kangaroos, namely, by drawing them inside out from the neck to the tail, making incisions at the proper places, so as to allow the legs to pasß through. The butchers could tell whether this can be done readily with sheep, and whether the ordinary process of skinning practised by them is to save time or to render the appearance of the carcase after skinning more saleable. If the latter be the motive, the appearance of the carcase, after skinning a la native, will, in boiling down, be of no consequence.

The water in the Artesian well at Southampton rises to within forty feet of the surface.

'or Petersburg tallow .... Siberia ditto Ditto ditto, seconds . . . Odessa London, town melted . . . New South Wales .... Cape of Good Hope . . . South American North American s. . 41 . 43 . 45 . 29 . 41 . 39 . 37 . 40 . 40 d. 8 0 0 0 0 6 0 0 9 LARD. Lard, bladdered in salt . . D.tto, firkin and keg (Irish) . Ditto, American (duty paid) . Ditto, ditto in casks . . . Suet, fresh and salt (in bond) . 57 . 47 . 41 . 37 . 42 0 6 G 6 6