NEWS AND NOTES

Taranaki Daily News, 15 September 1934, Page 24 (Supplement)

NEWS AND NOTES

CHILLED BEEF TRADE • '' ' The development of Australian chilled beef industry is increasing, and is receiving greater recognition by the shipping companies. This is demonstrated by the fact that the Orient company has decided to amend the plans of the liner Orion, which is now being constructed for the Australian trade, to provide for the ; carriage of chiUed beef. < There is reason to believe that the same company proposes to make structural alterations’ in its present fleet of steamers trading between. Australia and the United Kingdom, in order that the provision for the carriage of chilled beef may be extended. BISULPHITES FOR WEEDS ■ ' V It was pointed out in a recent article in the Journal of Agriculture, by B. C. Aston and J. A. Bruce, that in the course of a search for a suitable chemical compound for killing ragwort, which would not have the inflammable and explosive properties of sodium chlorate, certain oxidising salts might prove efficient in ragwort-control. They now report that other salts, such as bisub phites which are non-inflammable and non-poisonous, in addition to hypochlorites, thiocyanates, and chromates, have so far given some promising results when used in fairly strong solutions and in the dry form, in preliminary ragwort extermination experiments. The cost of bisulphites is in general much lower than the usual type of weed-killing compounds, being, for instance, very much cheaper to manufacture than sodium or calcium chlorate. When tried out on lawns, gardens, and paths in Wellington in the dry and solution form good kills of weeds were obtained, a fact which is suggestive that they may yet prove, for example, to be more suitable for this particular domestic use than the decidedly poisonous arsenical preparations and the dangerous chlorate compounds which have been in use for some time. The toxicity of bisulphites as weedkillers, and their effectiveness as ragwort exterminators in particular, will be learned from the conduct of further exhaperiments under various conditions, and a later stage it will be possible to in the journal more accurately of commercial biis accomplished by passgas through caustic until saturation occurs, bisulphite of soda are