Wealden Clay of Sussex. 197 



farmers. An Ill-made animal, ligbt in the hind quarters and in 

 all the best parts, coarse in the grain of the meat, and with a hard, 

 thick skin, will consume vast quantities of food without any pro- 

 portionate increase of value ; and thousands of Welsh, Irish, and 

 even English cattle are fattened annually at very little profit com- 

 pared with what well-bred stock would have produced — for good 

 beasts will frequently leave more profit than bad ones are worth, 

 Dickson, in bis ' Breeding and Economy of Live Stock,' gives 

 the following rough calculation of the national loss caused by 

 breeding bad cattle : — " Out of the 4000 cattle in Smithfield any 

 Monday morning there will be fully lOUO of the most inferior 

 description — the coarsest brutes imaginable. It may with con- 

 fidence be asserted that there are at least 50,000 of these inferior 

 cattle exposed annually in Smithfield market. Reckoning that 

 better-bred animals would realise a pound more to the breeder 

 -(a very low estimate indeed), a clear yearly loss of 50,000/. thus 

 arises from sheer neglect in one market alone.* What, there- 

 fore, must be the loss to the whole kingdom from this palpable 

 neglect, which could easily be remedied by a little more care 

 and at a trifling expense ? 



Fattening cattle singly in loose boxes may seem expensive at 

 •iirst, but in the end the expense will be repaid by the better 

 .thriving of the beasts, and by the complete preservation of the 

 manure. When fed loose in yards beasts drive each other about 

 incessantly, much food is Avasted, and the weaker animals thrive 

 slowly till the stronger ones are removed ; but if carefully fed in 

 single boxes, 20 beasts will not eat more than 18 would whilst 

 funning loose in one or two yards. A beast tied up by the neck, 

 with barely room to lie down, suffers much from the constrained 

 position he is kept in, for every animal has at times a degree of 

 restlessness and irritation about him which is only curable by 

 change of position. 



The beautiful and excellent little bullocks from the Highlands 

 of Scotland are too pugnacious when kept loose in yards to be 

 profitable to the farmer, and they cannot bear being tied up and 

 ^deprived of all locomotion ; but if fed singly in boxes they can 

 neither hurt nor molest each other, whilst they have freedom 

 enough to enjoy themselves, and can lie down and chew the cud 

 and fatten. 



The well-bred, quiet shorthorn, whose grazing qualities are 

 seen in perfection in a loose box, is still better suited to this 

 mode of feeding than smaller animals are ; for the rent of the 



* No estimate is hei-e given of the loss accruing to the feeder of these inferior 

 animals. bL per head -would not, in my opinion, be at all a high estimate of the 



joint loss to the breeders and feeders of such coarse, ill-bred cattle as those above 

 mentioned. This would amount to an annual loss of a quarter of a million 



.sterling on the stock shown in Smithfield market alone. — H. S. Tho3IPsox. 



