CATTLE. 41 



trary, kill their animals neither so young, because it is 

 when young that they lay on flesh most rapidly, nor 

 so old, because then they have ceased to increase : they 

 seize the precise period when the animal has reached its 

 maximum growth. 



These results, so favourable to English rural economy, 

 are reduced, it is true, by the value of the labour which 

 the cattle in France give. We possess in all about two 

 millions of oxen used chiefly for work ; and among the 

 cows there are many also which work in the plough. If, 

 like the English, we had nearly everywhere dispensed 

 with the working of oxen, we should have been obliged 

 to replace them by horses, and these horses would have 

 involved an expense representing the actual value of the 

 labour of the horned cattle. Valuing this labour at about 

 200 francs (8) per team, would give an annual sum of 

 two hundred millions to put to the credit of our race of 

 cattle. 



The produce of cattle in the two countries may there- 

 fore be reckoned in round numbers as follows, exclusive 



the report of a Commission appointed by the Crown in November 1849, to inquire 

 into the state of Srnithfield Cattle Market, it was shown on satisfactory evidence 

 that the number of cattle sold in -that mart alone amounted to 247,000 in the 

 previous year. These are variously assumed as producing from 16 to 18 

 each, showing an average total value of 3,853,000 ; but as the consumption of 

 butcher-meat in London is otherwise made up from the dead market, to the 

 extent, it is calculated, of nearly three-fourths of the whole, it may be fairly 

 estimated _that the value of cattle consumed annually in London alone amounts to 

 not less than 4,8-16,000 or thus, to what appears to be nearly a fourth part of 

 the amount generally set down as the total value of the cattle consumed in the 

 whole of the British empire. Again, the evidence produced before the above 

 Commission tended to show that the value of butcher-meat of all kinds annually 

 consumed in the metropolis, with a population of 2,360,000, was upwards of 

 10,000,000 ; while the highest estimate which we have seen that of Mr Spack- 

 man gives the annual value of sheep and cattle slaughtered in the whole United 

 Kingdom, with a population of 27,720,000 (in 1851), at 45,000,000. We can 

 scarcely think., though no doubt it must be greatly superior, that the proportion 

 of animal food devoured in London can be so large in reference to that consumed 

 by the rest of the inhabitants generally. J. D. 



