THE SAVINGS OF SCIENCE. 7gg 



We English are great meat-eaters, and, as our home supply is quite 

 insufficient, we have to import more than 000,000 tons every year. 

 With the growth of our population, and the decreasing number of 

 live-stock at home, the imports of meat from abroad have prodigiously 

 increased in the last quarter of a century. 



In a paper read before the Royal Colonial Institute, Sir Francis 

 Bell, the Agent-General for New Zealand, stated that frozen meat in 

 any quantity can be placed upon this market from the other side of 

 the world at 6(7. to 6%d. a pound, leaving a good profit to the grower. 

 " This," he added, " ought ultimately to make meat cheaper here, or 

 at least prevent the further rise now threatened. Australia and New 

 Zealand can, in fact, export 700,000 tons of meat a year, or 2,000 

 tons a day, which is not much more than you want in England even 

 now, without reducing even the present capital number of their sheep 

 and cattle, and we are able to send on sheep to Smithfield with greater 

 ease to-day than the Tweed farmers could one hundred years ago, 

 when meat was selling at a penny a pound in Scotland against ten- 

 pence in London." 



Horses, although numerous in some countries, as in Russia and the 

 River Plate states, have not been, commercially, very useful when 

 dead. In South America mares are never broken to the saddle, and 

 the carcasses are generally boiled down for their fat, the exports of 

 mares' grease being considerable, while the hide is also useful. But, 

 within the period now under our notice, horse-flesh has come largely 

 into use on the Continent for human food. Its sale has become a 

 legalized and recognized trade in many of the Continental states, es- 

 pecially in France and Germany. The published statistics of the 

 Society for Promoting the Use of Horse-flesh show that, since its 

 foundation in July, I860, 100,080 horses, 6,690 donkeys, and 395 

 mules had been sold in Paris alone for food, up to the end of 1881, 

 furnishing 67,809,460 pounds of meat. Horse-flesh is sold at half the 

 price of beef. The innovation has gained ground rapidly in most of 

 the principal towns of France, and the public sale of horse-flesh for 

 human food is now general in Austria, Prussia, Bohemia, Saxony, 

 Hanover, Switzerland, Belgium, and Sweden. In England, the hun- 

 dreds of horses which die in the metropolis are sent, with other car- 

 casses, to special firms, which utilize every part commercially. The 

 skin is removed, and the bones are taken out with great expedition ; 

 the flesh is then placed in caldrons, of a capacity of 600 gallons. 

 Upon boiling the flesh, the oil is separated, and used by soap-makers 

 and leather-dressers. The bones are also boiled, yielding further oil 

 and fat, and are afterward utilized for manure. 



In the United States there was formerly a plethora of waste. The 

 time was when, in Cincinnati, Chicago, and other slaughtering cen- 

 ters, the food of millions was cast out and allowed to be entirely lost 

 by being thrown into the river, or burned in large pits. Now, such is 



