GRAVESEND. 373 



used to lay a great piece of chalk in a trough where they 

 had their fatted calves, that the calves might lick it, which 

 in their opinion will have the effect of making the flesh 

 become whiter. 



But besides this way, there was to-day related to me 

 another trick, viz. : — If they slaughter a calf, say, at six 

 o'clock in the evening, in the usual way, then they stick 

 him in the neck, and let the blood run so nearly out of 

 him that he is [T. II. p. 8] almost dead. When they see 

 that no great quantity of blood is left, they stop the 

 blood so that it can run no more, and that the calf comes 

 round somewhat ; then let him so live till the morning of 

 the following day, when they always slaughter him. A 

 calf slaughtered in this way is said to have much whiter 

 flesh than if they had slaughtered him in the ordinary 

 way, and killed him all at once. 



The learned Dr. Lister also gives an account of this 

 in his Journey to Paris, p.m. 157. 



Smor. Butter. 



In Canterbury, in Kent, butter is not sold by the 



pound or by weight, as is the custom everywhere else in 



England,* but it is made rectangular and flat as a board, 



and is sold by the yard,f efter alntal. The butter in 



* This is not quite accurate. In Plot's Nat. Hist, of Staffordshire, 1686, 

 c. III., p. 108, 3: — " Limestone Hills. . . . The butter they buy by the pot, 

 of a long cylindrical form, made at Burslem in this county, of a certain size, 

 so as not to weigh above 6 lbs. at most, and yet to contain at least 14 lbs. of 

 butter, according to an Act of Parliament made about 14 or 16 years agoe." 

 There was a Surveyor appointed in consequence of the " tricks and cheats " 

 practised, whose duty it was to probe the butter-pots with a, long "butter- 

 boare " to see if they were packed full, "so that they weigh none(v/hich would 

 be an endless business), or very seldom." The Act of Parliament referred to 

 was passed in 1674, 14 Chas. II., c. 26, " Packing of butter." Repealed 

 36 Geo. III., c. 86, s. 19, 1796. Q. L.] 



\ In Mexico and California "jerked beef is sold by the vara ox yard, as 

 butter is" sold at Cambridge in England."— Flack, Prairie Hunter, p. 88. 



[J- L.] 



