2792. - on animal and vegetable food. 165 
large lumps of fat upon their backs , andthe fheep 
drag after them a fat tail, weighing from six to 
eight pounds. This prime quality of their fleth is | 
ascribed 'to akind of gramen peculiar to that is< 
land, which to. our quarter of the globe would per- 
haps be a present of more importance than’ all the 
rest of the products of Madagascar together. In 
the province of Caracas, and several other regions of 
South America, the meadow lands are verdant ail 
the year. Some private persons, therefore, pofsefs 
from 20,000 to 30,000 head of cattle ; and the beef 
is so immoderately fat, that the fat parts must be 
separated from the lean, in order that it may be eat~ 
en without disgust. In the neighbourhood of Por- 
to Bello, the meadows are, to all appearance, as excel 
lent as in Caracas; but the unfriendly climate m 
which'this city stands, operates so disadvantageous- 
ly on oxen, that their flefh is scarcely eatable on ac- 
count of its leannefs +. 
If therefore nature has denied to most of the coun- 
tries of the torrid zone those kinds of tame animals 
without which we in Europe could not subsist, fhe has 
refused them nothing but what would be either use- 
lefs or pernicious to them; for the frequent use of 
such flefh meats as we are accustomed to, would, in 
the torrid zone, infallibly produce a host of putrid 
diseases that would baffle the whole art of medicine, 
But for what this kind and tender parent seems to 
have deprived the inhabitants of the torrid ‘zone on 
one side, fhe has a thousand fold recompensed them 
TF Ulloa’s voyage, vol. i. p. $7. 
