114 STATES OF THE EIVER PLATE, 



go to prove the rule which I desire to inculcate for the 

 good of producers, shippers, and consumers. 



The reason of my belief that a sound nutritious food 

 cannot be obtained by any process of salting or curing 

 the flesh of the unfed and ' driven ' cattle of this country 

 is simply, that the means taken to preserve the beef are 

 exactly those which most surely, in the state of the cattle, 

 would deprive it of the greater part of its nutriment. 

 Salt is a powerful solvent of meat juices (this power ex- 

 isting in the acid of the salt, i.e. muriatic acid salt being 

 muriate of soda, or chlorine of sodium, of which more 

 anon), and it is in the juices or soluble substances (albu- 

 men, fibrine, &c.) of meat that all the nutriment exists. 

 Water w T ill also, and unaided, extract the nutritious 

 matters of meat. The most accurate experiments have 

 been made to determine these points, and therefore I 

 need merely state the facts. When lean meat is subjected 

 to the action of salt, the deliquescent properties of the 

 salt cause it to attract the juices of the meat, and a brine 

 is formed, which runs from the meat. This liquid which 

 is thus extracted from the meat, together with the salt, 

 contains the mineral basis of the meat, its phosphoric 

 acid, potash, &c. and its albuminous matters, together 

 with its peculiarly vivifying principles, kreatme and krea- 

 tinine ; consequently, in an equal degree as these matters 

 are abstracted from the meat, so its fitness for food is 

 diminished ; and it is impossible to salt lean meat without 

 its parting with a very large portion of its nutriment. 

 All housewives know that meat in certain conditions does 

 not, what they call, ' take the salt ;' and the meaning of 

 this is simply that the meat yields up its nutriment to the 

 action of the salt, and that it drains away with a portion 

 of that salt. Meat to ' take the salt ' must be exceedingly 

 firm, and highly fed with food rich in nitrogenous or 



