294 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIE^,V. 
struction of roads; and while in Brazil liad opportunity of 
learning that the country so praised for its fertility suffered 
everywhere from a painful scarcity of food. Later_, when in 
the La Plata states^ he saw the herds of oxen that were 
daily slaughtered for their hides and tallow only; and as 
the sale of these ensured a sufficient profit^ little account 
was taken of the flesh of the animals. It was not wholly 
lost, however; for large quantities, after being dried, were 
laid up for future use. 
To an observant mind the thought would naturally present 
itself, How desirable to transport to countries, less plenti- 
fully supplied, the superabundance of food which is to be 
found here ! England, to supply her growing marts, imports 
oxen from Holstein, and corn from all quarters of the globe. 
In Brazil is scarcity, while here the most excellent beef is to 
be had for the asking. But what was to be done with the meat, 
and how convey it thither where it was wanted ? To salt it re- 
quires workmen and casks for packing ; but the price of labour 
is so high as to destroy the advantages which otherwise would 
arise from the small cost price of the article to be exported. 
Then the volume, too, of the food in such a form presented 
difficulties for inland transport, and added to the cost even of 
sea-carriage. Year after year experiments were made to com- 
press into a small space a large amount of flesh without a loss 
of its nutritious qualities. They were persevered in : for Herr 
Giebert saw how great a benefactor he would be to over- 
populous Europe could he succeed in bringing thither, at 
a small cost, the vast quantity of nutritious food which, on the 
plains of La Plata, was so little regarded. But the attempts 
of fourteen years led to nothing*. 
Suddenly a ray of light illumines all, and shows the seeker 
where what he sought for is to be found. And it happened in 
this wise. Far away in a little German town lived another 
man, also a searcher and a solver of difficulties, and he, too, 
had thought much on the subject of food. He had analyzed 
the difierent substances man used for his nourishment, dis- 
covered the relative value of each and of the component parts, 
and had separated the essence from the mere non-essential 
husk. This man was Liebig. The result of his experiments, 
made many a year before, he gives to the public in a book 
called Chemische Briefe."’^ 
This book, as it happens, falls in the way of that other man 
in South America, who for a decennium and a half has been 
racking his brain with the solution of a difficulty. He finds 
in it the thing he wants ; the means of extracting from meat 
its very essence, and of thus giving in a small space a large 
amount of nourishment. 
