POPULAR SCIENCE 101 



as on this would depend the completeness with which the 

 material would regain its original fresh condition. By research 

 on these lines it should have been settled what were the differ- 

 ences between chilled and frozen beef. As an example of how 

 difficult it has been for new ideas to penetrate the indifference 

 of a flourishing trade we may quote an experiment made by 

 the firm of J. & E. Hall, of Dartford, on the application of 

 brine freezing to the preservation of meat, a question which 

 in the last few years has attracted much attention on the 

 continent of Europe. As this British pioneer work has been 

 completely neglected, we may be justified in giving here a 

 brief reference to it. We are indebted to Mr. Hesketh for the 

 following extracts from his diary : 



" January 26, 1889. — An experiment was made on freezing 

 mutton by direct immersion in brine made by common salt 

 and water and kept at a very low temperature by a C0 2 re- 

 frigerating machine. 



11 January 28, 1889. — Mr. Marcet and Mr. Hesketh had an 

 interview with Mr. William Cook, the London partner of San- 

 sinenas, then one of the most important meat freezers at 

 Buenos Ayres, at whose works Mr. Hesketh spent some six 

 months in 1886. 



"January 29, 1 889. — Messrs. Hesketh, GodfreyandMarcet, the 

 then partners in J. & E. Hall, lunched at the works off the mutton 

 which had been frozen by immersion, which proved very good." 



This application of brine freezing to meat as an industrial 

 process was patented by Messrs. Hesketh and Marcet * in 1 889, 

 but the utter lack of interest in this country and elsewhere 

 on the part of those concerned in the preservation of meat 

 debarred any development of the process. So complete, indeed, 

 has been the neglect of this early work that in a recent German 

 paper 8 dealing with the freezing of meat in a salt solution 

 the only reference is to Ottesen of Copenhagen, whose patent 

 on this question* was not filed until as recently as 191 2. 



Even the Committee on Food Standards of the Association 

 of Official Agricultural Chemists, in their definitions of meat, 

 do not distinguish between chilled and frozen meat, since their 



1 British Patent, No. 6,117, 1889. 



' R. Plank, " Uber den Einfluss der Gefriergeschwindigkeit auf die histolo- 

 gischen Veranderungen tierischer Gewebe," Zeitsck. f. allg. Physiol. 17, 221-38, 

 1918. s British Patent, No. 24,244, 1912. 



