SCIENTIFIC GOSSIP.

Globe, Volume III, Issue 247, 25 March 1875, Page 4

SCIENTIFIC GOSSIP.

(Melbourne Leader.") The meat preserving companies should not fail from want of advice, good, bad, and indifferent. Everybody knows how success is to be achieved, and as few suggestions are deemed worthy of a trial, the advicegivers are allowed to continue in their belief in their own infallibility. The National Food and Fuel Reformer of 12th December, contains a communication from one of these advisers, Francis Lebacq, who has invented a " seamless tin box of a flat, oblong, square form, with rounded corners," which he proposes to fill with meat in Australia, and supply at a cheap rate to English clerks and workmen who live in lodgings. These tins are to hold each a half-pound of meat, and eight of them are to cost no more than a single fourpound tin. How the meat is to be put inside of them, while they preserve their character of seamlessness, I do not know ; but supposing that that difficulty has been surmounted, a doubt may Btill be entertained as to the superiority of these tins. The inventor, to prove his case, assumes that the meat does not keep after being opened; but here he is altogether wrong. The Australian cooked meats keep sweet and good much longer than freshly killed meat will keep uncooked. The reason why Australian meat is put up in tins of not less than two pounds is that the consumers do not want smaller packages ; and the reason why other kinds of preserved food are put up in small tins is that they are comparatively exorbitant in price, and are not used as the substantial basis of a meal. The inventor of the seamless tins must look for appreciation among the purveyors of luxuries. Australian meat has become one of the necessaries of life in England, and must be supplied on the large scale. The prospects of the Arctic expedition of 1875 are spoken of in a very hopeful way; but when was it otherwise the case ? Looking at the matter, however, in a calm and unenthusiastic way, the odds are enormously against the pole being reached at this attempt, When it is considered

that since the beginning of the century a score or so of expeditions have been sent into the polar regions without extending the map more than about four degrees of latitude, while seven degrees more have to be traversed before the pole can be reached, it is at once seen to be unreasonable to expect that success should be attained at one more leap. Already indications of mismanagement are appearing at head-quarters. Applicants for special berths are advised that they need not apply, as there is a sufficiency of naval volunteers. The time fixed for the start is said to be the end of June or the beginning of July, whereas the best authorities say that it should be made early in May ; but this error will surely be corrected. The route laid down is through Smith Sound, but the reasons for the choice are open to criticism. If open water or a clear sheet of ice available for sledge travelling is looked for, there are some considerations which make it likely that the object will not be attained. Captain Walker, an experienced whaler, gives some excellent reasons for believing that there is no thoroughfare through Smith Sound, and that it is only an inlet. One of these reasons is that no icebergs pass through it; and another is that the tides are abnormally high, such, in fact, as are usually met with in gulfs or estuaries rather than in the straits. It is a question, however, whether a permanent ice-barrier at its upper end might not give rise to the tidal phenomena, in which case the second best thing to an open sea —a clear sheet of ice—may be reached. Other authorities, however, report a strong current through the sound from the north. These considerations, although not shutting out hope, should discourage great expectations. Australia will make a contribution to the success of the north polar expedition in the shape of sundry beams of stringy bark, that wood having been found to be the best for resisting the strains and nips to which vessels caught in the ice are liable, and being now employed for that purpose by the Aberdeen shipbuilders. Lieutenant Markham, who was at first designated as the leader of the expedition, is to be only second in command, and in that capacity will probably have the most work to do; for this he is well fitted, he having, among other qualifications, youth in his favor. The selection of Captain Nares, of the Challenger, as commander of the expedition, is acknowledged on all hands to be a happy one. Probably, after he has vanquished the north, he will turn his attention to the south pole, and if he should be able to take as great a stride in that direction as was accomplished by Ross in the Erebus and Terror, he will not find the task one of insuperable difficulty. The preventives of sea-sickness are still under discussion in the English papers, but the subject is treated in a Cockney fashion, as if the sufferers most deserving of pity were those who made short passages, such as the eighty minutes' run between the French and English coasts. They appear to be quite unaware of the fact that many delicate women and children are sometimes prostrated; with but brief intervals, for three or four months, and yet suffer no permanently bad effects. The latest of the proposed specifics is chloral—a drug dangerous in non-professional hands, notwithstanding its frequent use as a fashionable stimulant in lieu of the less injurious eau-de-cologne. The patient is to be dosed on deck before starting, and thus sent off to dreamland for the time likely to be occupied in the passage. The specific is of the kill or cure kind, as it is a matter for consideration whether the cure might not be still further simplified by the intending voyager committing suicide before going on board.