Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 9.djvu/565

 550 FBDEEAL REPORTER. �which is made in each, that the box or case must be hermetically sealed. Some criticism bas been made upon the use of this word. We do not understand it to mean the same as if it were employed in deseribing anything as bermetically sealed in a laboratory, but only tbat the package sbould be so sealed as to exclude the passage of air into or eut of the box or case. The patentee says that this box or case may be made of wood or metal, or both combined, of any suit- able form or shape, and of any desired dimensions. It is, perhaps, unnecessary for us to inquire, as all the parties in this case use metal, whether or not the box or case could possibly be made of wood, or whether, in order to accomplish the object which the pat- entee had in view, it must always be made of metal. �We will, therefore, direct our attention, in the first place, to the question whether or not what William J. Wilson describes in bis specifications, as just stated, was the proper subject of a patent. �The cooking of meat thoroughly by boiling it in water, so that the bone and gristle can be removed, has always been known. If it be admitted that the box or can must be hermetically sealed in order to be air-tight, that was an old device. The Appert processj described in Durand's English patent of 1810, required that the vessel (case or box) in which the food was placed should be air-tight, and that has ever since been regarded as indispensable in any process for pre- serving such food as is the subject of controversy here. Before the date of the patent to William J. Wilson, meat was placed in a pack- age and subjected to pressure to remove the air, and it is clear any Buperfluous moisture was thus also removed from the meat. This is shown in the Marshall patent of 1864, because it is manifest his description of the process necessarily implies the removal of the Buperfluous moisture from the meat, as well as the removal of the air . from the meat by pressure, and the hermetical sealing of the box or case in which the meat is placed for preservation, transportation, and sale. De Lignac (1855) submitted meat to a high pressure in the tin cans in which it was to be preserved, and which, apparently, were hermetically sealed. Lyman (1869) roasted his meat before putting it into the box or can, and he speaks in his specifications of stewing, boiling, or roasting the meat as being the ordinary mode at that time employed for preserving meat before packing it in cans. It will thus be seen that, prior to the issuing of William J. Wilson' s original patent, in 1874, meat was cooked in various ways; was sub- jected to pressure, by which the air and the superfluous moisture were expelled from it, both before and after it was put in the case or box ��� �