The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-12-09

D aud costs two cents Beef-tea con- talns almost no nuUiment, but only the havoring and stimulating qualities of the meat, When a person Is informed that teaspoonful of extract represents several pounds of beef, he lnfers that 1t is equally nouushing The truth is that the nourishment Is left behind In the boiler, A human being will starya to death on an unlimited supply of beef tea, The most Important element of the British iron ration is pemmican-a preparation of beef fat and salt, Its manufacture is a secret, It Is put up in tin cans of four ounces, equal to one pound of meat, and is eaten without further cooking, However, it may be made into hash or soup by boiling 1t With vegetables. It keeps sound for years, though exposed to air. With the pemmican goes can of the same size, containing a mixture of cocoa and honey.
 Ut is certain that canned foods will play an important part in future wars, The Belgian iron ration is a ten-ounee can of corned beef put up in a liquor that is favored with vegetables, The German emergency ration is a one pound can of preserved meat, with hard bread and pea sausage. A biscuit com posed of meat and flour has been tried for the German army, but the soldiers would not eat it. The biscuit was SUD- posed to furnish the fighting man with everything that was necessary for his physical support, water excepted. To be satisfactory, ration must be pala- table as well as wholesome and nutri- tious. A dietary for troops cannot be settled on basis of theory only; it must be tested in practice, What will satisfy soldiers of one nation may not suit those of another.
 "Very likely, United States soldiers would not put up with German 'erbs- wurst.' Yet that species of pea sausage is said to have been a leading cause of the success of the German arms in the F'ranco-Prussian war. Without it the troops could not have endured the fa- tigue to which they were subjected. The sausage is made of pea-meal, fat and bacon. It was devised by a Ger | man cook, from whom the invention was purchased by the government for twenty-five thousand dollars. The se- cret lies in the method of preparation | by which the article is rendered proof against decay. It was first used on a large scale by the second army under Prince Frederick Charles. A factory established at Berlin put up enormous l quantities of these s2usages and other preserved meats, furnishing to the 1 troops forty million rations. Each saul sage is eight inches long, and makes | twelve plates of nutritious soup There could hardly be a better emergency ra-
 tion.
 Among other things under consid- 1 eration by our own War Department are condensed soups. This little pack ct, which looks somewhat like bundle l of cigarettes, contains just three ounces l of desiccated pea soup. You observe, it l is so compressed as to be quite hard. l break it up and throw it into this sauce pan. To it I add one quart of water, and I place it on the gas stove here to 1 boil. For fiavoring, though it is not me- l cessary, let us add a small quantity of
 these evaporated onions. In the course 1 of fifteen minutes I will offer you a l plate of very excellent pea soup. Soups 1 you understand, are most useful in ra-
 tions For health it is not sufficient tc | put a certain amount of nutriment into the body; the stomach must be distend- ed. Soup does that. Incidentally, the | soldier who consumes one of these ra- | tions absorbs one quart of sterilized | water.
 Condensed soups may be purchased l in tablets three inches square and half
 an inch thick. Each tablet weighs foul l ounces, and makes six plates of soup
 In food value one tablet is equal to one l and three-quarter pounds of potatoes 1 Bean, moek-turtle, green-corn, barley I and potato soups are desiccated in this form. Tomato, vegetable and fish 1 choWder soups are similarly prepared 1 What do you suppose this is? It looks like a button, doesn't it? It is a cup Of 1 tea condensed. All you have to do is to drop it into a cup of hot water and
 stir it up. The sweetening is in the 1 button with the tea No, the sweeten. ing is not sugar, but a coal-tar product
 called 'saccharine,' which is more than
 two hundred times as sweet as sugar
 Thus the quantity added needs to be
 very small. Coffee is put up in the
 same way, with saccl1arine, as well as
 in a shape that looks like black mo. 1 lasses. l7'
 An iron ration is a short-weight and
 highly concentrated diet intended tC
 cover only brief period. It is not tC be used except when the regular foot
 supply cannot be obtained. Supposing
 the army supplies to be regularly fur
 nished, the fighting man ought to re
 turn from the campaign carrying in his haversack the same emergency ration
 with which he started out originally
 But it may happen that his regiment ol | brigade is cut off from the main body T and in that case the emergency rationS
 may be literal salvation. Or he may bt
 left wounded on a field of battle, unable
 to obtain anything to eat for days, un less he has it with him. During the re
 cent war with China the Japanest found emergency rations necessity il
 active service. An army or a large
 part of it, may be thrown rapidly for
 ward to hold a position, and it takes {
 week or more to make roads so as tt
 get supplies to the front. This very
 thing occurred at Vicksburg, where, fo,
 lack of emergency rations, Grants mel