72 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Jury, 1898. 
meat “breathe.” If the meat were shut up close after being killed, it would 
become putrefied in a few hours. Piled up, the big heaps of imperfectly 
cooled minced beef would soon develop taint. The cubes of meat should be 
uniform in size, and this is now cut up by machinery. The meat is then put 
in a jacketed boiler, as I have said, with its own weight of water, the heat 
being raised to 175 degrees Fahr., and it is kept stewing for about twenty 
minutes. It requires constant attention and stirring to prevent any possibility 
of burning, and the regulation of the heat must be nicely adjusted. 
It is then taken out and strained, the residue is pressed and squeezed, and 
the liquid put into a vacuum pan, and concentrated down to the desired mass, 
a brown pasty substance containing from 13 per cent. to 16 per cent. of water. 
If cooked too long in the first process, and if the albumen is not carefully 
strained out after coagulation, the extract will contain more moisture and the 
presence of albumen will deteriorate its keeping properties. The pure extract 
is wanted, and not a stocky, sticky, gelatinous mass. In some cases the mass, 
-after being heated, is put into bags and,the whole of the liquid pressed out by 
hydraulic or heavy pressure, so that the residue left is like nothing more than 
a piece of blotting-paper or gun-wad. There is little doubt that the latter 
system is the best, for the extract then contains the full forces of the meat, 
whereas by the straining process a good deal is left in the residue. Some 
works have been rather chary, however, of adopting the latter method through 
fear of too gelatinous and ‘“‘ stocky’ extract resulting. Stocky extracts are 
not wanted in England, and can always be made here, as they are done, in the 
form of jellies and soups, to which extract is added. The reason the meat is 
not kept at a high temperature for a long time is to prevent the decomposition 
of the gelatinous matter in the fibre, and its inclusion in the extract. Extracts 
(as shown in the table of analyses) should generally consist of about 16 per 
cent. water, 53 per cent. of extractive soluble in alcohol, 13 to 14 per cent. of 
extractive insoluble in alcohol, and 18 per cent. or more animal matter. The 
extract consists of inorganic and organic substances, the former being chiefly 
and generally alkaline phosphates and chlorides--chiefly phosphate of potash 
and chloride of potassium, with possibly some ammonia as the base of a 
phosphoric acid compound. The organic parts of the extract are kreatine, or 
kreatinine, and gelatinous extractive. A good extract should always have an 
acid reaction, its colour should be a characteristic yellowish-brown, and it 
should have an agreeable meat-like odour and taste. It should be entirely 
soluble in cold water, and should be free from albumen, fat, and gelatine. 
The big centres of the manufacture of extract of meat are Chicago, 
Buenos Ayres, Queensland (Townsville, Rockhampton. Gladstone, Bowen, 
Brisbane), New South Wales (Ramornie), Sydney (Meat Preserving Company), 
New Zealand (Hawke’s Bay—Nelson Brothers). The practical methods of 
manufacture are broadly on the same lines everywhere, but each centre has 
some little plan or convenience in operation that has been discovered in actual 
working, and formed the basis of some invention. A South American factory 
consists of a large, cool, dark, flagged hall kept scrupulously clean. Here the 
meat is weighed and passed through apertures to the meat-cutting machines of 
special design, that can get through an incredible amount of work. Hence 
the meat is passed into digesters, which hold about 12,000 lb. each, and it is 
‘‘digerated,” as it is termed, in a description of the commercial Liebig process, 
by high pressure steam, 75 lb. to the square inch, he liquid is then run to a 
series of fat-separators. Here the fat is separated in a hot state because no 
time can be lost in cooling it for that purpose, as decomposition sets in so very 
quickly. In clarifiers below the separators, the albumen and fibrin are 
coagulated out, and the liquor then run into large evaporators where vacuum 
evaporators evaporate the extract at a very low temperature, the liquor being 
filtered several times before it is run into the evaporators. 
In Bovril, we are told by the founder of this convenient form of putting 
up beef extract with other things, Mr. J, Lawson Johnston, that he hit upon a 
system of adding the albumen and fibrin to the beef extract in the form of a 
