132 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



marrow of the bones that are most likely to taint, and all this 

 they attribute to that deadly agent, animal heat. They say, 

 " Insure me that I can get rid of all the animal heat at once, 

 and I can cure meats without loss ; but any internal heat must 

 be attended with a certain percentage of taint." Your heavy 

 Chicago meat-packers commence operations about the middle of 

 October, and pack only during winter. Packing in ice in the 

 summer is expensive and dangerous, and ice-packing in the 

 South, in Texas and other States, has been attended with the 

 most disastrous failure. 



Pouchet and others may say that germs could not readily 

 pierce the frozen mass around the putrefying centres ; that the 

 critical point in the thigh, which the connoisseur in meats calls 

 the pope's eye, is shut up from atmospheric contact, and 

 Pasteur's germs could ill reach the innermost recesses of the 

 marrow. For a long time observations puzzled me, but I soon 

 got light from practical experience. I take a heavy piece of 

 beef in the month of July, and subject it to the process I suc- 

 cessfully adopt for the preservation of meats ; but I only allow 

 time for the surface to cure, and in a day or two remove the 

 beef from the preserving-cans. A depth of an inch may be 

 reached before evidence is obtained that the meat within is 

 still unacted on by the preservatives. I stick a trier, a pointed 

 steel probe, into the meat, and find it perfect. It hangs for an 

 hour. I cut open the meat, and right along the track of my 

 trier the flesh is green ; elsewhere the tissue is intact. 



But you will say the ham-curer finds the sourness in the inte- 

 rior of his hams when he first pierces them ; and whilst acknowl- 

 edging the justice of this remark, I have to draw attention to the 

 open vessels, channels, through which the germs of bacteria 

 vibrios and monads can travel at their pleasure. The arteries 

 are open tunnels with solid parieties, affording ready access to 

 the smaller vessels, where the blood constitutes the best pabu- 

 lum for the penetrating infusoria. Deep within a frozen ham, 

 protected by excellent non-conductors, such as the bony walls 

 around the marrow, the germs of putrefaction resist disturbing 

 influences, and when the time comes invade the whole mass. 



No one that I have heard of has yet explained the singular 

 phenomena wliich vs^ould puzzle chemists and the advocates of 

 heterogenesis. How is it that meat placed in refrigerators, and 



