P R E P R E 707 English law which operate not as extinguishing rights but as excluding the ordinary means of proving them. The following require to be noticed, (a) Vicennial prescription. By the Act 1617, c. 13, a vicennial prescription of retours was introduced, and in modern practice the same prescription is applicable to an extract decree of service which has taken the place of a retour (31 and 32 Viet. c. 101, 37). This prescription protects a person who has been served as heir for twenty years against action by any other person claiming to be heir. By the Act 1669, c. 9, holograph missive letters and bonds in compt books also prescribe in twenty years. The debt, however, is not in this case extinguished, as within forty years it may be proved by the defender s oath. (6) Decennial prescription. By the Act 1669, c. 9, all actions by minors against their tutors and curators, and vice versa, must be prosecuted within ten years from the expiration of the guardian ship (Erskine, Inst., iii. 7, 25). (c) Septennial prescription. By the Act 1695, c. 5, it is provided that no person binding himself for and with another, conjunctly and severally, in any bond or contract for sums of money shall be bound for more than seven years after the date of the obligation. But it is necessary that the cautioner either be bound expressly as such in the bond, &c. , or, if bound as co-principal, that there be cither a clause of relief in the bond or in a separate back bond duly intimated (i.e., notarially or in some formal way) to the creditor. This prescription does not apply to guarantees for the fulfilment of an office, or to security for a bill of exchange, or to judicial bonds. (d) Sexennial prescription. This prescription applies to bills and promissory notes, so as to deprive them of their privileges. After the lapse of six years the holder of the bill or note can no longer found on it except as an adminicle of evidence to prove his debt. This pre scription was first introduced by 12 Geo. III. c. 72. (c) Quin quennial prescription applies to bargains concerning movables, such as sales of goods, loans, deposits, &c. in short, to all mercantile transactions except such as pass into current accounts and fall under the triennial prescription noticed below. By the Act 1669, c. 9, such bargains prescribe in five years, and can thereafter only be proved by the debtor s writ or oath. The same statute also made ministers stipends, multures, and maills and duties prescribe in five years unless proved by writ or oath. (/) Triennial prescription. This valuable prescription was introduced so far back as the year 1579. By the Act 1579, c. 83, it was provided that "actions of debt for house maills, men s ordinaries, servants fees, merchants accounts, and others the like debts not founded on written obligations " shall prescribe in three years. Under the terms " like debts " have been held to fall such debts as workmen s wages, law agents accounts, and rents clue on verbal lease. All such debts must be pursued within three years, otherwise they cannot be proved except by the writ or oath of the party sued. The period from which this pre scription begins to run is the date of the last item in the account. With regard to all the minor prescriptions it is to be observed generally that the respective periods of time must have run without interruption, and that, except when the contrary is expressed in the Act constituting the prescription, the years of minority and non valcntia agcre are not taken into account. (H. GO. ) PRESERVED FOOD. The perfect preservation of any substance for use as food implies the retention of its full nutritive power, sapidity, and digestibility, with its natural odour and colour unimpaired, for such length of time as may be required. The process employed must be sufficiently cheap to allow of the preserved food being placed in the market at a price which will insure a demand for it. The operations connected with the preparation of many food-substances are partly directed to the produc tion of food in a new and more convenient form from that in which it is yielded by nature, and partly with the view of preserving the alimentary body. Cheese is an example of such a food-preparation, and to a smaller extent so also are butter and other edible fats and oils, as well as fruit and vegetable jellies and conserves. Con centrated foods and extracts, such as Liebig s extract of beef, belong to the same category, consisting of certain essential principles of animal food easily preserved, and prepared partly on that account. Many of the most important food-staples require nothing more than favourable natural conditions for their preser vation, till they are ordinarily required for consumption. Such is the case with the cereal grains, which are suffi ciently ripened and dried in the harvest field, and with all hard farinaceous and oleaginous seeds, nuts, and fruits. Most soft succulent fruits and vegetables, on the other hand, and all varieties of animal food require artificial preservation, and it is to these that the various processes in use are applied. These processes resolve themselves into four groups, (1) drying, (2) use of antiseptics, (3) exclusion of air, and (4) refrigeration. Several hundreds of patents have been obtained in the United Kingdom alone for preservative processes coming under one or more of these heads ; but in reality the methods of preservation in practical operation are not many. 1. Drying is the most ancient and primitive of all processes for preserving food, and, although it answers but imperfectly for most animal substances, yet in dry hot countries it is very extensively practised. In the River Plate regions of South America a large quantity of beef is annually prepared for export to Brazil and the West Indies under the name of " tasajo " or " charqui dulce," principally by drying. The meat is simply cut into pieces, freed from fat, bone, and tendon, powdered with maize meal, and dried hard by exposure to the sun, care being taken to keep it protected from rain. The dried product has about one -fourth the weight of fresh meat, and is of a dark colour. It requires to be soaked in water and cooked for a long time, yielding at best a tough indigestible meat ; but it makes a well-flavoured nutritive soup. The greater part of the charqui or jerked beef of South America is, however, slightly salted as well as sun-dried ; and among many races where drying is practised the use of salt and smoking are also appreciated. Many attempts have been made to introduce dried meat in the form of powder or meal. For this purpose fresh meat, deprived of fat, is cut into thin slices and slowly dried at a low heat in an oven or heated chamber till the meat is hard, crisp, and dry. When powdered, such a preparation keeps well if it is not exposed to damp ; but it cannot be said to offer any advantages for general use, although it might be of value to an army during a campaign. Nevertheless a company, under the name of the Carne Pura Company, has been established in Berlin within the last few years for the manufacture of such meat -powder. Of an ana logous nature are the concentrated soup tablets or cakes, prepared, principally in Russia, by the rapid evaporation of rich soups, with which dried vegetables and flour are sometimes incorporated in proportion sufficient to yield a good soup on dilution with boiling water. These soups are generally deficient in aroma and have frequently an unpleasant gluey consistency and taste. Concentrated meat biscuits, in which flour and extract of beef are prepared in a thoroughly dry condition, and which were largely used in the American Civil War, the German pea sausage ("Erbsenwurst"), made famous during the Franco-Prussian War, and pemmican are examples of food in which dried meat may be well preserved in conjunction with farinaceous substances. Preservation by simple dry ing is extensively practised among the Chinese for their gelatinous foods, such as trepang, dried tendons, skins, mussels and other molluscs, and fish. Milk also may be preserved in the form of a dry powder, but the result is not sufficiently attractive to command a market. Succulent fruits and vegetables are satisfactorily pre served by simple drying. The principal dried saccharine fruits of commerce are raisins, currants, figs, dates, and prunes. These differ in their nutritive properties con siderably from the natural fruits they represent, as do also the farinaceous fruits and vegetables preserved by drying, such as the banana, bread-fruit, mandioc, itc. A process of drying and compressing ordinary pot-vegetables and potatoes, invented by M. Masson about 1845, is now carried out on a large scale by Messrs Chollet & Co. of Paris. The vegetables to be treated are carefully picked,
plunged into boiling water to coagulate the vegetable al-