HIGH FARMING. 187 



yards square for a bullock it is said that they thrive 

 excellently. Exercise in the open air, hitherto con- 

 sidered necessary, is now looked upon as a loss, which 

 shows itself by a diminution in weight. 



One cannot help feeling sorry to see these poor ani- 

 mals, whose congeners still cover the immense pastures 

 of Great Britain, thus deprived of their liberty, and pre- 

 vented from moving about, and in thinking that the day 

 may perhaps come when all the English cattle which now 

 enjoy the green pastures will be shut up in melancholy 

 cloisters, which they will leave only for the slaughter- 

 house. These manufactories of meat, milk, and manure, 

 where the living animal is absolutely treated as a machine, 

 have something about them revolting, like a butcher's 

 stall ; and after a visit to one of these stalled prisons, 

 where the process of making the staple food of the English 

 is so grossly carried on, one takes a loathing at meat for 

 several days. But the great voice of necessity speaks out. 

 Every energy must be used to feed that population which 

 unceasingly multiplies, and whose wants increase in a 

 greater ratio than their numbers. The cost of producing 

 meat must be lowered as much as possible, in order to 

 obtain a profit with the new scale of prices. 



Adieu, then, to the pastoral scenes of which England 

 was so proud, and which poetry and painting vied with 

 each other to celebrate. Two only chances remain to 

 them ; and these are, that some new discovery may be 

 made for raising the produce of pasturage to the same 

 height as that which stabulation now gives, or that 

 further experience may show some detriment to the cattle 

 from this confinement. Already complaints are made 

 about the quality of the meat so abundantly produced 

 in this way ; it is said that the oilcake gives it a bad 

 taste, and that the excess of fat on the Durham cattle 



