An Essay on Fat and Muscle. 
255 
animals have little or no internal fat, it being chiefly collected on 
their rumps and tails. Climate must have some influence in 
producina: these characteristics, since the very women are distin- 
guished at the Cape for their prodigious fatty rumps. In our own 
country, examples of external fat are particularly seen in the once- 
famed Dishley breed of cattle, which have an accumulation of fat 
spreading itself over the rump. There appears a tendency of the 
fatty tissue to remain separate from the muscle, in the improved 
long-horned breed, the fat mingling less with the lean than in 
any other of our native breeds. The Hereford breed have also 
a similar tendency, but not nearly in so great a degree. In the 
Jersey breed of cattle, we have an example of accumulations of 
loose fat in the inside. This peculiarity is common to all good 
milching breeds, more or less, for they all turn out well when 
well fed, in the "fifth quarter." Some French and Spanish 
cattle imported into Cornwall in the summer of 1842, when 
killed, showed an immense accumulation of internal fat; they 
were also particularly lean and coarse-looking animals. In the 
in)proved Devons, the fat and muscle are generally well mixed, 
whilst in the common coarse breed of the Devon kind, we have 
plenty of inside tallow. The short horns carry more inside fat in 
proportion to their size than the improved Devons ; they are also 
better milkers. From these examples we may safely infer that 
the better the milking qualities of the breed are, the more likely 
is that breed inclined to carry inside lat. 
15. As we proceed with our subject, it will be found that some 
of those characteristics are in great measure dependent on internal 
organisation, and accordinglv experience has proved that animals 
possessing small lungs, small livers, and small spleens, indeed 
''small offal' of every description, have a greater disposition to 
latten and to lay that fat on the proper places, which we consider 
to be a fair propostion of fat and lean, than coarse-bred ill-pro- 
portioned animals, which will be found to possess larger offal than 
well bred animals in proportion to their size and growth. We 
can clearly understand the reason of this, since we now know that 
the less quantity of oxygen an animal consumes, the fatter it 
becomes ; for small lungs cannot decarbonize as much blood as 
large lungs, nor can a small liver secrete as much bile as a large 
liver, bile being formed in the herbivora from the non-nitrogenised 
materials of their fotxl ; hence a larger quantity of carbon is used 
in the produciion of fat. Many physiologists conceive that the 
secretion of bile is by no means the sole function performed by 
the liver, and look upon it as a supplementary organ of the lungs, 
assisting that organ in the depuration of the blood, and lilvc it 
eliminatmg from the blood its superfluous hydrogen and carbon. 
The same will apply also to the spleen, its functions being, we 
