The  Meat  Industry  in  its  Relation  to  Agriculture.  143 
Standard  of  Excellence  for  Judging  Carcasses  of  Mutton  and  Lambs. 
1.  Dressing  of  carcass 10 
2.  Colour,  general  appearance  of  carcasses,  and  firmness  of  fat  . 10 
3.  Proportion  of  meat  to  bone 15 
On  splitting  the  carcass  and  dividing  it  transversely,  the  following 
points  are  to  be  noted  : — 
4.  Colour,  texture,  and  thickness  .......  10 
5.  Plumpness  of  legs  of  mutton 20 
6.  “Eye”  of  the  chops  and  thickness  of  loin.  ....  25 
7.  Fleshiness  of  fore-quarters 10 
Total 100 
In  fixing  such  standards  it  must  be  borne  in  mind  that 
meat  may  vary  very  much  in  quality,  and  that  this  is  principally 
due  to  the  different  percentages  of  water,  protein1,  fat,  and  ash 
present,  all  these  constituents  varying  in  different  portions  of 
the  carcass.  The  quantity  of  water  present,  for  example, 
ranges  from  48  per  cent,  in  the  side  to  75  per  cent,  in  the 
round.  The  new  study,  therefore,  in  connection  with  the 
qualities  of  meat  should  be  based,  first  of  all,  upon  their 
chemical  constituents  and  food  values,  and  the  points  should 
be  determined  by  the  amount  of  meat  of  high  nutritious  value, 
and  not  upon  any  basis  of  the  amount  of  fat.  This  is  a highly 
technical  question  which  has  not  been  studied  at  all  systematically 
in  the  United  Kingdom,  and  it  would  be  of  great  advantage  to 
agriculturists  if  the  whole  matter  were  investigated  and  placed 
upon  a scientific  basis,  so  that  the  existing  rule-of-thumb 
practice  might  be  entirely  abolished. 
Different  Classes  of  Cattle. 
As  has  been  mentioned,  there  are  some  twenty-three  different 
types  or  breeds  of  cattle  in  the  United  Kingdom,  and  in  the 
different  European  countries  the  total  number  of  breeds  is 
about  150.  It  is  a notable  fact,  however,  that  what  are  known 
as  pure-bred  animals  are  not  generally  suitable  for  the  meat 
purveyor’s  purposes.  There  have  been  attempts  made  to  arrive 
at  the  dual-purpose  cow,  but  these  have  not  succeeded  very 
well,  and  it  seems  to  have  been  established  that  an  ordinary 
cross-bred  animal  adapts  itself  more  easily  to  meat  purveyors’ 
uses  than  does  any  other.  In  the  meat  industry,  dairy 
cattle  have  to  be  dealt  with,  and  owing  to  the  fact  that 
it  is  difficult  to  fatten  them  in  anything  like  the  same  way  as 
ordinary  cross-bred  animals,  the  prices  they  realise  are  corres- 
pondingly less,  and  the  quality  of  the  meat  is  often  of  an 
inferior  order. 
1 The  protein  is  arrived  at  by  multiplying  the  nitrogen  by  (!  25. 
