Loss of Muscle. 171 



Suffering from cold.* There is also a loss in good grass 

 and hay, and other flesh-forming food supplied to cattle, 

 that does not form flesh, in animals that are inactive, or 

 still, from confinement or other cause. In the cases of 

 fattening cattle and hogs, the proteid material is trans- 

 formed into fat. 



In store cattle, also, much proteid material is lost from 

 inactivity during the winter, and there is great loss of 

 muscle from inaction, after it is developed by activity in 

 summer grazing. 



The muscle of fattening cattle is wasted by inaction, 

 and much of their proteid food either goes to form fat, or 

 is lost in the droppings, or both these results follow their 

 inaction, with the loss of food-value, as well as food. 



The muscle-forming food that is .wasted by misappro- 

 priation, as stated, and in other ways, probably would pro- 

 duce the value of ten million pounds of muscular, or nu- 

 tritive meat food, if fed to growing cattle, or 50,000,000 

 dollars in money value. So that, including loss of muscle 

 by store cattle in winter, the loss of muscle in multitudes 

 of inactive or confined cows, and the loss, both in best or 

 prize cattle, and ordinary fattening cattle, we have a total 

 loss, in food value and money value, of 300,000,000 dol- 

 lars yearly waste, resulting from the reduction of muscle 

 and food-value, from reducing or prohibiting the natural 

 exercise or out-door activity of only about Aa// the cattle 

 in the United States ! including the loss in inactive hogs ! 



Three hundred millions of dollars yearly loss in food-value 

 and money-value is not a small sum. The estimate is not 

 assumed to be entirely correct, but is probably much below 

 the actual yearly loss in food-value, from misapplication of 



*"Bxercise, as is well known, increases the produclion ol heat. It is 

 through the increased activity of the circulation that the body is warmed by 

 exercise. This is the reason why walking is so eflectnal in warming the 

 feet, and why exertion of any kind raises the temperature of the parts em- 

 ploycu." whether the legs, or ftrms, or the whole body.-Huxley andfou. 

 mans' Phyei,, p. 483. 



