MECHANICS AND USP:FUL ARTS. 77 



regions will dry perfectly sweet and sound throughout, without 

 other curing. Putting these facts and Pasteur's discovery together, 

 is there not probably a practicable principle which may be applied 

 to the preservation of fruits and meats, and even of the human 

 body, without the aid of a vacuum ? 



UTILIZATION OF WASTE FOOD. 



The utilization of the waste food of South America, if it could 

 be accomplished profitably, would be the greatest possible boon 

 to the poor. In the vast prairies of America, extending from the 

 Mississippi to the Missouri, bisons roam freely in droves too large 

 for the eye to compass, but certainly numbering many hundred 

 thousand beasts. In the pampas of Buenos Ayres the wild oxen 

 are at present slaughtered at the rate of 400,000 annually for 

 their hides and skins, the flesh being an absolute waste, civiliza- 

 tion having not yet arrived, in these regions, at the simple process 

 of cutting the flesh into long slips, and then drying it in the sun, 

 in which form it comes from the River Plate to the Southern States 

 of America, and is there eaten by the negro population in the 

 form of jerked beef. In Moldavia and Wallachia there is an 

 abundance of ox flesh wasted, the immense herds of this quarter 

 of Europe being slaughtered simply for their fat and horns. Some 

 of this beef, and some also from Australia, has come over to this 

 country in hermetically sealed cases ; and capital food it is, much 

 better than the salt junk upon which we used to feed our navy ; but 

 it has not j^et made a footing among our population, although it 

 can be sold in London at sixpence a pound. 



Mr. Simmonds, in a paper contributed to the "Journal of the 

 Society of Arts," in speaking of the vast sources of unutilized food 

 that exist in difi"erent quarters of the globe, states that the quan- 

 tity of animal matter wasted in the Newfoundland cod-fishery is 

 120,000 tons annually. Surely, if none of this can be secured for 

 food, it may be made available for some other useful purpose. 

 Prof. Way has, we understand, prepared a manure from refuse 

 fish, which contains a very high percentage of ammoniacal salts 

 and phosphate of lime. We are told, indeed, that the guano isl- 

 ands will be exhausted by the year 1888, or thereabouts ; and if in 

 the mean time we have not brought our own sewage into use, our 

 agriculturists will be sorely pressed for a powerful fertilizer. Tiie 

 enormous number of horses in Buenos Ayres renders them of little 

 commercial value ; but it is certainly odd to hear that the number 

 of mares slaughtered in tliat country merely for tlieir hides and 

 grease is so great that it is found economical to light the city of 

 that name with gas made from the fat of these animals. Again 

 Mr. Simmonds tells us, that from 18,000 to 20,000 elephants are 

 killed annually to furnish the ivory used by the Sheffield manufac- 

 turers. Elephants' flesh is very good ; and the late Mr. Gordon 

 Gumming spoke rapturously in his volumes on African travel 

 about the delicacy of elephants' feet; not that we think it likely 

 that the flesh of this animal will ever come into use among our- 

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