18 THE PROGRESS OF HIPPOPHAGY. 



10d. per pound for beef. The high price of butcher- 

 meat, the depressed fortunes of British agriculture, the 

 growing desire of the mass of the people to eat more 

 animal food, the grave importance of the question in 

 relation to public health and the national vigour, com- 

 bine in inducing us seriously to consider why the flesh 

 of the horse should become an article of daily food. If 

 it be good, it ought to be used ; and if it be common in 

 our butcher-markets, this new article of diet must en- 

 large the sphere of the farmer's labours as the purveyor 

 for the sustenance of the nation. He is no longer a 

 mere grower of vegetable productions : he is becoming 

 more and more a manufacturer of animal food ; and 

 there is no good reason why he should only supply us 

 with that furnished by the ox, the sheep, and the pig. 

 Let him satisfy himself as to the agreeable and nutritious 

 qualities of horse -flesh by eating it on the first oppor- 

 tunity. He will thus help to beat down an unhappy 

 prejudice, and by accustoming the people to enlarge the 

 limits of their diet, he will do that which will benefit 

 them, and at the same time extend the field of his oper- 

 ations as a raiser of animal food. 



But as few farmers will "eat a horse," either from 

 philanthropy or in hope of filling their purses by induc- 

 ing their neighbours to become hippophagous, we shall 

 endeavour to stimulate them to perform their office of 

 feeding us on whatever we will eat of that which the 

 land produces, by acquainting them in particular, and 

 the meat-eating public in general, with what is doing 

 on the Continent in this matter of eating horse-flesh. 



Horse-flesh is freely eaten at Vienna and in many 

 other Continental cities, but the public sale of it is for- 

 bidden in Paris. Though this prohibition be still in 

 force, it is evidently on the point of being removed, the 

 authorities seeing no reason why that which is largely 

 eaten, and with manifest advantage, should not be pub- 

 licly sold. The last lingering prejudice is about to 

 yield, vanquished by the irresistible logic of facts. 



