226 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Mr. Richardson. I do not know why Prof. Gamgee got me 

 up here, except to exhibit a Yankee in connection with a sheep. 

 I happened to run across the Professor some time ago, in 

 Europe, and found him connected with meat-preservation, 

 which was a matter that interested me. Having been a con- 

 siderable time in Texas, where sheep and beef are of little 

 value, his process not only interested me, but the more I saw 

 of it the more deeply I became interested, and the more confi- 

 dent I became in its success. One reason for such confidence 

 was the fact very forcibly alluded to in a lecture here yesterday. 

 The time had come when it was absolutely necessary that some 

 process of this kind should be discovered, for the time had come 

 when poor people could not have meat to eat, and Providence 

 always provides for the wants of man in due time. I ate of a 

 piece of beef that was cured in London, (the can in which it 

 was cured being sun*ounded with water at a temperature of 

 110°, for ten days,) which was as perfect a piece of beef as I 

 ever tasted, both warm and cold. That interested me. The 

 animal was killed on the 2d of March, and a quarter of the 

 beef was cured in London, off which we dined at Prof. Gamgee's 

 on the 13th of April. The balance of it was kept in his kitchen 

 until the 18tli of June, in the open air, and we dined off it 

 again. There was some left, and a piece was sent to New 

 York, arriving there about the first of July. A peculiarity 

 of this process is that in hanging this meat in the open air a 

 very thin coating dries upon the surface, and when you cut 

 through that the juices of the meat appear the same as when 

 killed. My son cut off this thin coating, and took a piece of 

 this beef to an experienced butcher in Washington Market, and 

 he looked at it, smelt of it, and said possibly it might have been 

 killed a day and a half. 



I have been six months in Chicago preserving meat by this 

 process. Before I went, there was some preserved in New York. 

 Prof. Gamgee preserved a sheep. (I speak of this to illustrate 

 the simplicity of the process.) A young man, some twenty 

 years old, saw him prepare the gas and go through with the 

 process of preserving the sheep, and the next day that young 

 man went through the process and preserved a sheep rather 

 better, everybody said, than the Professor himself. 



