1 Avrin, 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 283 
that the only trouble, if trouble it be, lay in getting a quick system of trans- 
portation in order to overcome those morbific changes which take place in fruit 
from the time of its shipment in this country to its arrival in England. With 
the view to overcome that loss, as well as to enable the marketing of the fruits 
in perfect order in England where they will be fairly dealt with, and not in 
America where every imposition is placed upon them, I resorted to a series of 
experiments that will not only facilitate growers in the long transportation, but 
entirely overcome those septic changes supposed by past experimental shippers 
to be due to the heat generated in the hold of a steamship. 
Mind you, I do not wish that my readers should violently conclude that [ 
consider the heat of the hold does not produce some change in the fruit, but I 
would state that the heat so produced can have no other effect than the heat of 
ordinary fire, vapour from a kettle, or that of the sun directly applied. It is 
not, therefore, the heat of the hold that I in my research wish to deal with, nor 
is it those noxious gases that some advance as the cause of the decomposition, 
but a bacteriological change which the fruit undergoes in the ship’s hold. By 
taking the circulation of a plant and its fruit into consideration, 1 directed my 
line of research accordingly, and I have pleasure to announce through your 
columns that I have discovered a process whereby on the application to the 
cut ends of the orange immediately as they are removed from the tree, and the 
envelopment of the fruit in an antiseptic paper afterwards, all putrefactive 
changes are arrested and the fruit remain pure and sweet. ; 
The question may arise in the minds of sceptical ones, whether the “ stem 
preserver,” as I have designated my paste, and the antiseptic paper for wrapping 
will not be injurious to the being who eats the fruit so preserved ? In answer to 
this, I say, “No, by no means.” lor the substances used by meinmy preparations 
are not deleterious to man if they were even absorbed,but as a fact they cannot 
be absorbed, through the skin and stem of the fruit; they act as preventives 
and destroyers of bacteria which riddle their way into the fruit and cause 
putrefaction. : 
What I desire to bring before the agricultural society or anyone 
interested in the future welfare of the fruit industry of the island is this: That 
I shall be happy to apply my process of preservation to any experimental ship- 
ments of fruit to England that they may wish to make, and, when the fruit arrives 
there, submit it for analysis under the supervision of the Lancet and British 
medical journals to prove its wholesomeness, and thus remove any doubt that 
may be cast upon it otherwise. In conclusion, I claim for my research— 
1st. That the edible portions of the fruit so treated are free from 
the absorption of the substances used in its preservation. 
2nd. That the decomposition attendant on bruised fruit is allayed, that 
fruit becoming hard and firm. 
8rd. That the exudative matters from decomposing bruised: fruit on 
reaching the medicated paper is at once converted into an aseptic 
fluid which, instead of causing the surrounding fruit to rot in the 
box as is the case in the present system of packing, actually 
preserves them. 
4th. That if the packages of fruit get wet, instead of the fruit softening 
and rottening as under the present system, tt becomes firm. 
5th. That of necessity the ripening of the fruit is allayed.* 
*This matter of the antiseptic treatment of fruit for export has been under the consideration 
of experts in all the Australian colonies for several years, and all are agreed that there is a great 
deal to be said in its favour, but it is a large and important subject which it is necessary to consider 
with the utmost care, in order that the best results may be obtained.—Ed. Q.4.J. 
