CURING AND PRESERVING BEEF AND PORK. 



Value cf Solar evaporated salt as compared with the best foreign 



saltSj determined. 



Sec. N. Y. State Ag. Soc. : 



Dear Sir, — In the course of some investigations on the manu- 

 facture of common salt, I have had occasion to inquire into its 

 useS; the adaptation of different kinds to particular purposes, and 

 into some of the injurious effects which are alleged to come from 

 the use of bad salt. Many of these being of a character to inter- 

 est agriculturists, I have thought it might not be improper to pre- 

 sent them to the notice of the State Agricultural Societyc 



One of the most important uses of salt is in preserving meat, 

 cutter, cheese, &c., and for this it seems indispensable. How it 

 operates to produce this result and the precise changes which it 

 effects in the substances preserved, are not fully understood. 

 Liebig in his work on Agriculture and Physiology, p. 295, says, 

 " salts of mineral acids with alkaline bases, completely arrest 

 decay when added to decaying matter in sufficient (^[uantity, and 

 when their quantity is small, the process of decay is protracted 

 and retarded.-' ^^ Fresh flesh over which salt has been strewed, 

 is found after twenty-four hours swimming in brine, although not 

 a drop of water has been added ; tlie water has been yielded by 

 the muscular fiber itself, and having dissolved the salt in imme- 

 diate contact witli it, and tliereby lost tlie power of penetrating 

 animal substances, it has on this account separated liom the Uesh. 

 The water still retained by tlie flesh contains a proportionally 

 small quantity of salt, having that degree of dilution at which a 

 saline fluid is capable of penetrating animal substances." 



" This property of animal tissues is taken advantage of in do- 

 mestic economy, for the pur]>ose of removing so much water from 

 [As;. Tr. '53.] n 



