TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, JULY 15, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3135, 15 July 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, JULY 15, 1881.

It appears only to be a question of time —the time required to obtain the machinery from England and to set it np in this colony—before frozen meat for the London market will become a regular article of export from these shores. Already one New Zealand company has telegraphed an order home for the necessary machinery, and other companies are rapidly completing arrangements to enable them to enter upon a field of enterprise that cannot fail to be of the very greatest importance to the welfare ot this country. In one of our Southern exchanges we notice a letter from a correspondent in which a description is given of the Frozen Meat Company's works at Orange, 192 miles from Sydney. These works are only partly completed, but a Giffard machine, of 25 horse-power, costing about £1100, was at work, supplying frozen air to tbe three chambers

already oree'ed, ea.h 14 ;'eet by 29 feet, and 7 feot 4 inches in height, fitted with iron bare for harping tbe meat; each chamber, it was stated, would contain 700 sheep or 240 cattle, and the tine occupied for freezing would be 3G hours for sheep, and 48 hours for cattle. The walls of tlese cb.Bu.bers are double, end are fried witu 12 to 14 inches of dry .avidu.t, or, preferably, they are lined with three thicknesses of strong paper, and then were painted with silicate paint. They are floored with concrete, but a new chamber, 19 ie.r by 20 (Wet in course of erection, would be floored with timber packed in sawdust or tan, as the concrete was found to d : ffu■_ the frctt ii t; ; the ground, and was both more costly and not so good as limber. A timbtr box 14 in. square runs round the top of the walls of the freezing chambers with apertures oin. in diameter and 3 feet apart, through which the frozen air is forced by the engine. The snow accumulates in these boxes to such an extent t-.at they require to be cleared once or twice in 24 hours. One chamber was freezing beef, and tbe waste uir wasr used to freeze the other two ■shambere to prepare them for the recepri in of -teat. The air in them we found rj'iixidevrDly under' the freezing point and in tne other we found tbe temperature 30 degrees below zero and the beef as hard as ice. Escape vents are provided for the waste air in the roof of the chambers, which after it has served its purpose can be used to cool the carcasses of beef or mutton before freezing. Doors in the roof are available for hoisting the meat into o*" out of any room, as the side doors all open from room to room. The principle of the Giffard machine is to compress a large volume ot air into a small compass and with it the caloric or beat which it contains which makes the receiver intensely hot; this hot compressed air is now carried through minute brass tubes, around which there should be a constant sfeam cfcold water. This extracts all the caloric from the compressed air, which being liberated through tne receiver ov snow chest (so called from the rapidity with which snow gathers in it), passes into the chambers to be frozen and then expanding in volume abstracts any caloric that may be in the air of the freezing charaber aud so creates a more or less intense old. At Orange there was difficulty from tbe absolute want of wnter, „nd when heavy rain caused the creek to flow it was so hot that it had to be pumped ioto underground tanks, and then though cook d by the snow out of the cheats and chambers, the temperature could not be got below 70 degrees, thus involving a great waste of time and power.

The fat and refuse are treated in two large digesters, under a great pressure of steam; the refined fat is run off direct into casks; the liquid is used for feeding pigs, for which extensive and complete yards are being provided, and the bones and dry refuse are to be crushed in a bone mill for manure. Into the works there is a sidiicr of the Sydney and Dubbo Railway, where the live stock is received and the frozen meat delivered, the charge made by the company for receiving, keeping, slaughtering, freezing and again delivering in the close trucAs, to be specially provided by Government, being one halfpenny per pound for meat and fat, the owners of the Btock paying for the scrim in which each quarter of beef and body of mutton is sewed up. The superiority of the Giffard over the Bell-Coleman machines is spoken of in the highest terms. Both have been tried, and absolute success is expressed as certain. The price of beef and mutton at Orange, the most convenient place for its supply iv New South Wales, is u„d~r 10s per lOOlbs, but the quality is inferior, though the supply is immense. They have to contend on the other hand with great deficiency of water or none at all, with a hot climate and a long land carriage to Sydney of 192 miles. In New Zealand these difficulties need not exist. We have easy communication between the producing districts and shipping ports, where abundance of water for power, cooling, &c, is, or may be in almost all cases, available, while in this temperate climate there need be no trouble about setting the meat before freezing. The droughts which sometimes destroy such numbers of stock and render the supply of fat stock uncertain in Australia are unknown in New Zealand. Here the supply of butcher-meat and dairy produce is only limited by the profitable" demand, for which a climate and soil so practically suited for turnip and green crop husbandry, for artificial grasses and cereals, it is difficult to estimate the continually increasing, wealth-creating power of the improved and systematic agriculture which would result.