him the curious machinery which acts upon the vast correspondence of the metropolis with the country, and of the country generally with foreign parts, within the establishment at St. Martin's-le-Grand. The machinery for its conveyance is still more vast, if not so intricate. The foreign mails have at their command a fleet of steamers such as the united navies of the world can scarcely match, threading the coral reefs of the "lone Antilles," skirting the western coast of South America, touching weekly at the ports of the United States, and bi-monthly traversing the Indian Ocean-tracking, in fact, the face of the deep wherever England has great interests or her sons have many friends. Even the vast Pacific, which a hundred years ago was rarely penetrated even by the adventurous circumnavigator, has become a highway for the passage of her Majesty's mails; and letters pass to Australia and New Zealand, our very antipodes, as soon as epistles of old reached the Highlands of Scotland or the western counties of Ireland. This vast system of water-posts, if so they might be called, is kept up at an annual expense of not much less than 1,000,000l. sterling.

The conveyance of inland letters by means of the railways is comparatively inexpensive, as many of the companies are liberal enough to take the bags at a very small charge; the total cost for their carriage in 1854 being only 211,4567. 16s. 11d. Every night at eight o'clock, like so much life-blood issuing from a great heart, the mails leave the metropolis, radiating on their fire-chariots to the extremities of the land. As they rush along, the work of digestion goes on as in the flying bird. The travelling post-office is not the least of those curious contrivances for saving time consequent upon the introduction of railroads. At the metropolitan stations, from which they issue, a letter-box is open until the last moment of their departure. The last letters into it are, of course, unsorted, and have to go through that process as the train proceeds. Whilst the clerks are busy in their itinerant office, by an ingenious, self-acting process, a delivery and reception of mail-bags is going on over their heads. At the smaller stations, where the trains do not stop, the letter

bags are lightly hung upon the rods which are swept by the passing mail-carriage, and the letters drop into a net suspended on one side of it to receive them. The bags for delivery are, at the same moment transferred from the other side to the platform. The sorting of the newly-received bags immediately commences, and by this arrangement letters are caught in transitu, and the right direction given to them, without the trouble and loss of time attendant upon the old mail-coach system, which necessitated the carriage of the major part of such letters to St. Martin's-le-Grand previous to their final despatch.

The success of Mr. Rowland Hill's system, with its double delivery, its rapid transmissions, and its great cheapness, which brings it within the range of the very poorest, is fast becoming apparent. Year by year it is increasing the amount of revenue it returns to the State, its profits for 1853 being upwards of 1,000,0007.; a falling off, it is true, of some 600,000l. a year from the revenue derived under the old rates, but every day it is catching up this income, and another ten years of but average prosperity will, in all probability, place it far beyond its old receipts, with a tenfold amount of accommodation and cheapness to the public. As it is, the gross earnings have already done so by nearly 250,000l. a year; but the cost of distribution has, of course, vastly augmented with the great increase of letters which pass through the post under the penny rate.

PRESERVED MEATS.

In the year 1799, at a place called Jacutsh, in Siberia, an enormous elephant was discovered embedded in a translucent block of ice, upwards of two hundred feet thick. The animal was as perfect in its entire fabric as on the day when it was submerged, and the wolves and foxes preyed upon its flesh for weeks. Upon an examination of its bones, the great Cuvier pronounced it to have belonged to an animal of the antediluvian world. We

might fairly presume this to be the oldest specimen of preserved meat upon record, and Nature was therefore clearly the first discoverer of the process, although she took out no patent, nor made any secret of her method.

The exclusion of the external air in this natural process, combined with the effect of a low degree of temperature which prevented fermentation taking place in the tissues themselves, man has long imitated. In the markets of St. Petersburg vast quantities of frozen provisions are to be found the greater part of the year, and our own countrymen have taken advantage of the method to preserve Scotch and Irish salmon for the London market.

Our own illustrious Bacon was one of the first to recognize the vast importance of preserving animal food; and the last experiment the great author of Experimental Philosophy performed, was that of "stuffing a fowl with snow to preserve it, which answered remarkably well," in the conduct of which he caught a cold, and presently died.

Indeed, modern luxury has brought this process, in a modified form, into our own homes, and every man who possesses a refrigerator has the power of arresting for a time the natural decay of animal and vegetable substances. This mode of preservation is too evanescent, and at the same time too expensive and cumbersome, especially where transit is concerned, ever to prove of any great importance in temperate or warm latitudes.

The more scientific and enduring method of excluding the air from the article to be preserved, has also long been practically known and roughly carried out. Good housewives of the old school would have stared, perhaps, if they could have been told, whilst boiling and corking down, hot and hot, their bottled gooseberries, that they were practising an art which, when performed a little more effectually, would prove one of the most valuable discoveries of modern times. But we do not exaggerate. The difference between the bottled gooseberries and the meats preserved in vacuo is only a question of degree, and the art of preserving a few vegetables from year to year, and of storing up whole herds of oxen and keeping them, if needs be,

till doomsday, depends entirely upon the power of pumping out more or less atmospheric air from the vessels containing them.

The first successful attempt at preserving meat by this latter process was made by M. Appart, in France, in the year 1811; and for his discovery the emperor rewarded him with a gift of 12,000 francs. His process was essentially the same as that of the old housewife-he boiled his provisions, thereby getting rid of the greater portion of the air entangled in their substance, but instead of the clumsy method of corking, he hermetically sealed his cases at the proper moment with a plug of solder. This method was brought soon after to England, and remained the only one in use until the year 1839, when M. Fastier sold to Mr. Goldner an improved process, by which a complete vacuum is formed in the canisters, thereby ensuring the preservation of their contents as long as the vacuum is maintained.

This process, which is patented, is carried on by the firm of Messrs. Ritchie and M'Call, in Houndsditch. There is so much that is curious in their establishment, that if our reader will walk with us, we will take a rapid survey of the actual manufacture, instead of entering into dry details.

The room which we first enter is the larder-the people's larder. A lord mayor would faint at the bare contemplation of such an embarrass des richesses. What juicy rounds—what plump turkeys-what lively turtle-what delicious sweetbreads -what pendants of rare game-what tempting sucking-pigs and succulent tomatas! Come next week and the whole carte will be changed; the week after, and you shall find a fresh remove. A plethora in the market of any article is sure to attract the attention of the manufacturer. His duty is to buy of superfluity and sell to scarcity; and by this judicious management he can afford to sell the preserved cooked meats cheaper than they can be procured in the raw state in open market. We shall see presently how infinitely this principle of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, and of storing for the future, can be extended, and what a vastly important principle it is.

Aswe pass through the main court to the kitchen, we see a dozen

fellows opening oysters, destined to be eaten perhaps by the next generation of opera-goers. Here is the room where the canisters are made the armour of mail in which the provisions are dressed, to enable them to withstand the assaults of the enemy.

The kitchen itself is a spacious room, in which stand a series of vats. There is no fire visible, but look how simply those halfa-hundred canisters of green peas are being dressed. There they stand, up to their necks in a brown-looking mixture, very like chocolate; this is a solution of chloride of calcium, which does not boil under a temperature of 320 degrees. Steam-pipes ramify through this mixture, and warm it up to any degree that is required within its boiling point. By this arrangement a great heat is obtained, without steam. The canisters containing the provisions were, previously to being placed in this bath, closed permanently down, with the exception of a small hole, not much bigger than the prick of a cobbler's awl, through the cover. And now observe, the cook stands watching, not with a basting-spoon, but with a soldering tool and a sponge. Steam issues in a small white jet from one of the covers; this drives all the enclosed air before it; and at the moment when experience tells him that the viands are done to a turn, he squeezes from the sponge a drop of water in the hole; the steam is instantly condensed, and as instantly he drops, with the other hand, a plug of molten solder, which hermetically seals it. Canister after canister at the proper moment is closed in the same manner, until the whole are finished.

Rounds of beef, of 50 lb. weight, can be preserved by this method, which the old process did not allow of. Poultry and game, which also require large canisters, have to be watched with minute attention; and here the skill of the French cook is brought into play; the process being, however, in all precisely the same. The canisters we have just seen closed down, for anything the manufacturer yet knows to the contrary, may be entire failures. All the air may not have been extracted, or it may have crept in after the sealing process. In either case the meat is spoiled, and it is as well that this fact be ascertained