114 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



demand calls for it, the former will find his profit in •furnishing 

 the supply. 



The use of mutton iii this country, as an article of food, 

 has only begun of late to be extensively appreciated and 

 valued ; beef and pork have been preferred, while the equally 

 nutritious and far more wholesome mutton has been rejected. 

 There is no kind of meat more nourishing and healthful than 

 this, and when a taste for it has once been formed, none more 

 palatable, and, pound for pound, it is more cheaply produced, 

 and wastes less in being prepared for food than beef. In 

 his report on Sheep Husbandry, Mr. Grinnell says that 

 " English chemists, by a series of careful experiments, find 

 that 100 lbs. of beef, in boiling, lose 26| lbs., and in roasting, 

 32 lbs., by evaporation and loss of soluble matter, juices, 

 water and fat. Mutton, on the other hand, lost in 100 lbs., 

 by boiling, 21 lbs., and by roasting, 24 lbs. ; or, in another 

 form of statement, a leg of mutton costing, raw, 15 cents a 

 pound, would cost, boiled for the table, 18| cents per pound, ' 

 while boiled fresh beef, at the same price, would cost 19^ 

 cents;" so that, as a matter of economy, the mutton would 

 have the advantage. And, again, when we consider the 

 healthfulness of mutton, especially when compared with pork 

 as an article of diet, there can be no possible doubt of its 

 greater value. A well-fattened sheep will produce a pound 

 of fat meat which will go as far to support life as a pound of 

 pork, and that, too, more free from all those objectionable 

 properties which belong to pork. From the excellence and 

 wholesomeness of mutton as an article of animal food, from 

 its being more appreciated, and being of better quality on 

 account of the improvement of the quality and fattening of 

 the sheep, mutton is fast becoming one of the staple articles 

 of food, and already ranks by the side of beef, as of equal 

 dietetic value. 



It is stated on good authority that consumption is less 

 prevalent amoug Jews than all other people, and it is a fact 

 that the Jew never eats pork, but always beef and mutton ; 

 and when we consider how largely the integrity of the health 

 depends upon the quality of the food, this immunity from 

 this terrible disease, whether owing in part or wholly from 

 the abstinence of the use of pork, furnishes a sufficient hint 



