38 STUDIES OF POULTRY. 



plies. Yet with the education of the farmer in the care of the eggs 

 produced and in the necessity for prompt sales, with refrigeration 

 in the packing houses and refrigeration in transit and during mar- 

 keting, it is merely a question of time and the extension of these new 

 methods until the bad reputation of the " July egg " will be a thing 

 of the past. 



SCIENTIFIC DATA APPLIED TO THE INDUSTRIAL USE OF 

 REFRIGERATION. 



One after another the great industries of the world are coming 

 to depend upon scientific methods for solving practical problems; 

 one after another they are establishing laboratories and experimental 

 plants for their own advancement. No industry can afford to ignore 

 or slight any honest scientific research in the field of its endeavor, 

 be the results, at first sight, laudatory or condemnatory of its prac- 

 tices. It is upon the basis of scientific research, frequently made 

 without any idea of its practical application, that the greatest tech- 

 nical advances of the age have been founded. 



So it must be with the refrigeration of foodstuffs. For twenty-five 

 years the industry has struggled to achieve results, advancing by the 

 aid of individual industrial experience only. The workers, naturally, 

 have been men unskilled in close and accurate observations and un- 

 trained in connecting cause and effect in so complicated a problem. 

 That they have reached their present degree of skill is greatly to 

 their credit. 



That great benefit, not only to the industry but to the consumer, 

 does accrue by attacking the problems of refrigeration of foods from 

 a scientific view point is abundantly illustrated in the change in the 

 handling of fruits, resulting in practically a revolution in the market 

 product, brought about by the pomologists of the United States 

 Department of Agriculture. Results for which the industry could 

 find no cause were explained. The remedy then became a compara- 

 tively simple matter. Practices which had the confidence of all were 

 shown to be founded on errors of fact and were producers of unsus- 

 pected evils. They were promptly discontinued. With such guidance 

 the handling and storage of vast quantities of fruit, bringing it within 

 reach of all the people as in no other country outside the tropics, 

 has progressed in the United States until it may well be considered 

 a model for other industries. 



Such scientific investigations of the chemistry, bacteriology, and 

 structure of refrigerated poultry as have been reviewed in the open- 

 ing section of this paper are laying the foundation for betterments 

 in the handling of poultry and eggs under refrigeration, just as the 



[Cir. 64] 



