A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

Kumara Times, Issue 523, 31 May 1878, Page 2

A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY.

I am almost afraid to tax you credulity by mentioning Mr Edition's very latest discovery ; y* t there is quite as' little deuht of its truth as there' is of ihf phonograph. The discovery Wis detailed somewhat minutely as to x-e----sults in the JSew York Gi'aphic ; but as the patent .rights have not been fully secured, a description of the machine is withheld. It is nither more nor less than the making of food, whether animal or vegetable, out "f the three simple elements of earth, ai'-, and w.iti-r. In the piocess of his scientific research the thought smirk Edison that analytical chemistry had been pursued to (he of synthetical chemistry., and he put the question to himself: "Can't I anticipate the slow piocess of nature, and produce food for man in tins' laboratory of nature." Acting u|iou ihis . thought, he set to woi k, and the result is a machine which he thinks can be made with forty variations, that is, to. produce fotty different kinds of food. He has so far succee !e<l in .making about forty varieties of nesh, fowl, cereals, vegetables, fruit, coffee, tea, wine, ifce. ; and on actual test the only dihVrwnce between the chemicaliy produced beef, mutton, and »auie from that of the living animals, is an absence of libre. This may appear astounding to your readeis, lait a moment's r>ilectiou will show that however greatly more important the economic lesults of the fo »d creator may be than those of the phouograph, its realisation by a comnelent chemist by no means so marvellous as the mechanical contrivance for reproducing every variety of sound

with unvarying fidelity. The process is going on perpetually, according to unvarying natural laws. The only notice of this invention has been in the Graphic. It is a scientific baby newly b>rn, but trigger than its father. Should it prove what its inventor claims for it it will solve the problem of poverty, revolutionise social conditions and put an end to the martyrdom of man. Faraday stopped on the edge of this discovery, which was foreshadowed by Bacon with the prophetic intuition of geiinis.—Otago Tiraea' American correspondent.