PRESERVED MEAT.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1265, 5 March 1872, Page 2

PRESERVED MEAT.

We take the following from a Glasgowpaper of the 12th December:— At the FleskeiV Soiree in the City**; Hall last night, Mr William Turner, who presided, brought up that neverfailing topic of domestic interest—the high price of butcher-meat, He dis~ claimed on the part of the trade all responsibility for the increased rate which had prevailed of late, and maintained that '* high prices of the common necessaries of life were positivtdy injurious to buyer and seller, while no class of the community would rejoicemore than the ileshers to see a return to fair and moderate prices." Accepting Mr Turner as a competent authority on this subject, and agreeing with him that the advance in butcher meat is in the main attributable to the supply, it is obvious that it is in the development of the latter that we must seek for the means of effecting a reduction. We must have the power of drawing freely on the inexhaustible meat resources of. South America and Australia if we desire to restrict the upward range of prices at home. Fortunately, the resources in question are gradually becoming more and more available, and it is now actually the case that in certain places in the South of England the price of batcher meat lias, owing to importation, been favorably influenced for the purchaser. An estimate of the rate of progress may be formed from the following figures : —ln 1866 the value of the preserved beef and mutton shipped to this country from Australia was .£321; in 1867, £18.820; 1868, £45.746; 1869, £80,385; 1870, £203,874; 1871 (estimated), £600,000. These figures represent a growth which is quite extraordinary. If it only continues, the meat market of the country must be affected, and the price of butcher meat will inevitably fall. There is every prospect of its continuance, we understand, the taste of the people for the food increasing as rapidly as the means of supply, while both are apparently in but the earliest stages of their possible development. The competition will tell more seriously against the farmers and stock-breeders than against the fieshers, who are merely middle men, and are as Mr Tinner' rightly says, without any special interest in high prices. Farmers and stockbreeders, however, are tolerably sharp sighted, and may be left to take care of themselves. The public interest lies in having a beef and mutton market with prices ruling as they did twenty years ago; and this end will probably be secured when the 50,Q00,0C0 sheep and 4,000,000 horned cattle grazing on the Australian plains are made, thoroughly available for British consumption.

The women of Rome are getting up a subscription for the statue of Garibaldi, to be erected before his death. The Inverness Courier announces that the monument to Flora M'Bonald is now safely placed over the grave of the heroine in the churchyard at Kilmuir, in the Isle of Skye. A monolith lona cross, 18ft. Gin. in height, placed upon a basement 10 feet higb, has now been erected over the grave, and while it stands there the memory of our countrywoman will be kept fresh in the mind of the people. We extract the following from the Lancet: —" Our old friend tight-lacing has again made his appearance. Beaten back for- a time, probably more by fashion than the spread of know ledge, he has not been killed, but has on.ly recoiled apparently for a better spring : : for his victims are as numerous and as pitiable as ever. The folly is one which was formerly to be found only in the drawing-room, but now it also fills our stieets. Jt is lamentable to observe at every tuna a woman—young or old—who moves forward in a stooping position, unable even to hold herselt upright in consequence of the constraint upon the muscles of the bacfc. If the evils of tight lacing were confined to the distorted appearance which it never fails to produce, we might regret- indeed to see the female form divine so. defaced; but it would scarcely be in our province to comment on it. But, as medical practitioners, we see its effects everyday in the train of nervous, and d} r speptic symptoms by whiqh it i* constantly indicated.,"