EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
59 
the most part impoverished lands, lack the size and develop- 
ment which they would have attained through better keep, and 
consequently fall short of the price they would otherwise have 
commanded in the market. Still, they may pay better than 
they would, had they been reared at any considerable outlay ; 
since such are, for the most part, an inferior breed of animal, 
and therefore have it not in their power, under any circum- 
stances, to repay great cost of production. 
To the feeder, the cattle shows within these few years past 
have certainly read an important lesson. They have warned 
him of going to the expense of heaping loads of a substance 
upon his thriving beasts, which, after all, can only serve the 
tallow-chandler’s, not the butcher’s, purpose. We should be 
sorry to see the day when fat meat was despised ; at the same 
time, feeders ought to understand that it is not the fattest beast 
that is the most admirable, no more than it is the most valuable, 
though that which is the most disposed to become so may be, 
and is, deservedly lauded. The beast of all others the most 
justly admired and valued, is the one disposed to fatten in, in 
place of upon , the substance of his flesh. What can be finer 
or more prized than the marbled ribs of beef or the sirloin, 
wherein the fatty matter, running in streaks among the fibres 
of the flesh, assumes the admired aspect of veins of marble, 
so that, when brought to table, the two substances eat together, 
mutually enhancing the flavour and relish of each other? This 
is the kind of fat beast that we desire, and this is the breed — if 
a breed so disposed there be — which demands cultivation. So 
far as fat is the question, it behoves both breeder and feeder 
to keep this consideration in view ; and it especially concerns 
the latter to save the money in his pocket which he now so 
wantonly expends in the over-production of a commodity worth 
only half the price of parts consumable for food. The last 
show of cattle, it is generally allowed, evinced improvement in 
this respect ; and, so far as it did so, it may be regarded as 
giving earnest of advancing a step towards a show at some 
future day, when it shall become a matter of marvel how we 
could have awarded prizes for sheer adeps , to the exclusion of 
all regard for whereabouts it was deposited, and without any 
thought about what was to become of it. 
