ON ARTIFICIAL REFRIGERATION. 953 



rotten. Desiccation had been slight and the antiseptics had been used 

 in moderate doses, to avoid adventitious tiavor. 



Secondly. Meatin canvas shipiied anywhere, but most frequently to 

 the Brazils, and on one memorable occasion, by the steamship Somerset- 

 shire, to the port of Melbourne, Australia, arrived in excellent condition. 

 Indeed, the mutton on board the Somersetshire was served one day in 

 each week to the passengers, and proved better than the mutton newly 

 killed on board. It was juicy and tender. 



The inference was manifest — slight but i^rogressive desiccation at any 

 temperature protected the meat from mould. 



In 1857, that most fertile inventor and distinguished physicist, Mr. C. 

 W. Siemens, had conceived the idea, of blowing cold air into a cellar or 

 chamber, for the obvious purpose of preserving perishable material. He 

 only sought provisional protection for the process of compressing air, 

 cooling it, and then expanding it in a cylinder or engine, immersed in 

 brine or a solution of chloride of calcium, so as to obtain low tempera- 

 tures. 



Shortly before the Franco-German war in 1870, I erected appliances 

 in Paris, to show my method of meat-preservation, and I used ice and 

 salt to dry and cool the air so as to avoid the expense of an ice-machine 

 for the simple i)urposes of demonstration. The Emjieror ]N"apoleon was 

 to have witnessed my experiments, but I returned to London, the war 

 broke out, and some of the meat remained hung uj) in the open air till the 

 first siege of Paris, when it proved most acceptable. 



I have purposely entered into these details, since whatever may have 

 been conceived by others was unknown to me, and I believe I was at 

 least one of the first to erect an ice-machine with an adequate apparatus 

 to utilize pure, dry, cold air for the preservation of meat. The summer 

 of 1870 showed me that atmospheric air did no harm to the cured meats j 

 but, on the contrary, that the more we attemx)ted to check its circula- 

 tion by enveloping the meat the more difficult was its transportation 

 across the seas. 



It is also certain that all the methods of producing cold-air currents 

 around meat for transport were practically anticipated by me early in 

 18G9, and the person of all others who deserves the most credit for the 

 development of the meat-trade with England bj the dry cold-air pro- 

 cess, using ice, is Mr. T. C. Eastman, of New York. His enterprise, 

 wealth, and trade facilities enabled him to adopt a patented j^rocess, that 

 of Mr. Bates, which demanded much courage and capital for its develox)- 

 ment. Its success has been one of the most important commercial vic- 

 tories of the current decade. 



Mr. Eastman writes me on the 25th of December, 1878 : 



"We commenced the shipment of beef from this country to England, 

 September 29, 1875, and shipi^ed durmg the balance of that year 299 cattle, 

 125 sheep, 25 lambs, and 20 pigs. 



"In the year 1870, 17,099 cattle, 6,057 sheep, 1,935 pigs. 



