20 THE PROGRESS OF HIPPOPHAGY. 



If we suppose the fifteenth part of 3,000,000 handed 

 over to the butcher, we have 200,000. Suppose 50,000 

 of these diseased and unfit for food, we still have 

 150,000 healthy animals, which would furnish 6,000,000 

 Ib. of nutritious food. As that weight is equivalent to 

 the meat furnished by about 100,000 head of cattle, the 

 question is of great economical importance in France, 

 where the working-classes, especially in the country, 

 do not eat butcher-meat more than five or six times 

 a-year. M. Play, in a work devoted to the subject, has 

 demonstrated that a man's daily normal consumption of 

 animal food should be 250 to 300 grammes ; and that 

 for the attainment of this rate by the whole French 

 people the quantity of butcher-meat must be three-and- 

 a-half times greater than it is. 



" John Bull " is very far from being such a beef-eater 

 as is generally imagined ; but poor " Jean Crapaud " 

 is so much of a vegetarian, by compulsion of course, that 

 it is really most wise and benevolent to make a man of 

 him by giving him more of the " strong meat for men," 

 which undeniably is found in the flesh of the horse. 

 The Commission to which we have already referred, 

 acting on the Scotch proverb, "The proof o' the puddin' 

 is the preein' o't, " organised last March a grand ban- 

 quet, at which nothing was served save horse-flesh, in 

 order that amateurs might make themselves acquainted 

 with the merits of this kind of meat. Moreover, a 

 number of Parisian workmen have petitioned the Pre- 

 fecture of Police to authorise the opening of butcher- 

 shops in which nothing shall be sold but horse-flesh. 

 This demand is reasonable, as a protection against those 

 fraudulent butchers who sell horse-flesh instead of beef, 

 charging, of course, the price of the latter. 



An additional proof of the progress of Parisian hippo- 

 phagy is recorded in recent numbers of the ' Bulletin of 

 the Imperial Society of Acclimatation.' Before a dis- 

 tinguished audience of ladies and gentlemen, members 

 of this most useful society, M. E. Decroix, veterinary 



