A New Food Preservative. AN EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) London, April 5.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 371, 25 May 1889, Page 4

A New Food Preservative. AN EXTRAORDINARY DISCOVERY. (FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.) London, April 5.

Sojhk mails back I mentioned to you a new " Food Preservative," which was about to be elaborately boomed in the City, and from which the patentees and a syndicate, consisting of some particularly cute Yankees, expected great things. Well, last week this syndicate, which now calls ifcfcelf the Food Preservation Company, pave a smart lunch at the Hotel Continental, ab which all sorts of viands, alleged to be preserved by this process, were presented, and to which we pressmen were invited. I didn't go, for the Bimple reason I feel that eating a good lunch at the Hotel Continental would not in any way convince me ot the virtues of the preservative. Besides, I have a horror of food doctored up by chemical process, and I feltit would bs worse if the meats were as aged as they pretended to be than if they weren't. Reading of the lunch subsequently, however, roused my curiosity, and this week I determined to look into the new preservative process thoroughly. The result has startled me a good bit. One scarcely likes to risk an obiter dictum on such a subject, but really unless Mr Duniells of Chicago is having a game with the great B.P. and deceiving u& in gome extraordinary and wholly inexplicable manner, a wonderful discovery has been made, and one that must in time totally revolutionise trade in all perishable products. ]\lr Daniells's process is at once simple and inexpensive. All that the future preserver cf meat, fish, fruit, or vegetables will require will be an air-tight chamber and some of Mr Daniells's patent powder composed (so he avers) of sugar, sulphur, sassafras, nitrate of potassium, and cinnamon. This powder is placed at the top of the air-tight chamber in which your meat, etc., is hung, and ignited. It at once evolves a heavy gas, which falls to the bottom of the chamber and destroys the oxygen. The meat or fruit or milk (or whatever you wish to preserve) is left in the chamber several hours. On being taken out, it can be exposed to the atmosphere for Aveeks. or even months, without any sign of decay. Why this is, scientists don't seem to be able to say, but that it is so they cannot deny. The office of the Company presents an extraordinary appearance. It is hung with joints ot meat which sceptics have brought to be treated and subsequently attached to hooks by tape, sealing the latter with oheir signets to ensure their not being tampered with. Amongst the ''show" preserves were a leg of beef, a sheep's carcase and some joints of pork, which had been fumigated before Christmas and hanging in the office ever since. They looked dry, but there was no smell coming from them whatever. The Secretory is particularly proud of a semi - rotten pine whicli Solomons, tha fruiterer, brought to the Company, cynically observing if they could stop that decaying they could stop anything. The pine was fumigated on February 26th, and is to-day neither better nor worse than it was then. The rotten part, of course, remains rotten, but the sound is perfectly sweet and good. The fumigation appears to have no sort of deleterious effect on such delicatelyflavoured produceas grapes, apples, tomatoes and oranges, save to preserve them. I tasted samples and could detect nothing at all unusual in their fkuours. Water which has been fumigated never goes stale, and will preserve fish fresh for any reasonable length of time. Just think what the effect of this will be on the fish trade alone. Water which has been fumigated turns a trifle yellow, and has ajust perceptible (but by no means unpleasant) acid flavour. Sir Francis Dillon Bell and Mr Kennauay are both immensely impre&sed with the importance of the new discovery, and so is Sir Chas. Clifford, who has tes-ted it in every possible manner, having meat, etc., fumigated and then taking it home and locking it up in his own larder. This is the course I am pursuing with a chicken and a leg of mutton I have sent to be treated. My faith in the Company's bona fides is complete, but in describing the experiment (if successful) it will be more satisfactory to be able to say I have kept the meat under my own eye for three months. The syndicate have not decided yet whafc course to take re their patent. Probably, however, they will sub-let it to Preserving Companies as they arise. v Refrigeration andßefvigeratingCompaniea are of course doomed. Within two years Daniells's process will havesuperscdedevery other mode of preserving fresh meat, etc. But more on tin's point in my next. '

THE ARKTOS REFRIGERATOR. The Agents-General, Sir A. Blybh'.'Sir W. Buller, the Nelsons, and a bevy" of Anglo-Colonial journalists and genfclenp[en interested in the frozen meat trade, spected, on Wednesday morning, a new ammonia process for refrigeration, calledthe ' • Arktos. " Its chiet merits are simplicity and economy. The apparatus consists of three connected wrought-iron tubes, devoid of valves, cocks, taps, moving - parts or machinery. These, duly charged | with suitable chemicals, constitute the 1 ' "Arktos." Heat applied at one end, of the Arktos (by stove or gas-burner) for a certain period initiates the phenomena of cold and ice al the other, and is maintained continuously by periodic applications afc intervals varying from a day to a week dependent on requirements and insulation. Some doubt exists whether the motion of a ship rolling or pitching would nofc upset the "Arktos's" internal economy and mix things up a bifc. It is therefore to be tried on boarrl a yacht in the Channel whilst en route, to Paris Exhibition.

SIR JULIUS VOGBL'S BOOK. The " Athentßum " of Saturday last contained a long review of Sir Julius Voeel's "2000 A.D.," from which I extract the following :—: — " We are somewhat doubtful whether Sir Julius Voxel's volume should bo classed among novels, for the tale that it contains, which is very dull, is a mere excuse for startling and lively statements with regard to the future of the British Empire for 110 years to come. It is somewhat odd to find an ex-Conservative candidate, even if he did afterwards become one of the leaders in a coalition Government in New Zealand, writing as Sir Julius Vogel does about property and certain other points of existing Conservative doctrine. Sir Julius Vogel's experience in New Zealand of course leads him to inform us that there were heavy succession duties in the year 2000 and strict protection, as well as differential treatment of foreign goods. Instead of there being a public debt, an ' enormous store of money was laid up by the empire as a reserve fund. Sir Julius Vogel says a good word for his old colony, and he amuses himself at the expense of his New Zealand friends by describing the position of their descendants— as for example the Buller family and the Fitzher berts— at the end of the next century."

Great- thoughts proceed, from the heart.