THE DAIRIES OF LONDON. 
379 
patible with health. Still children did not live upon the 
milk of the sow. Many porkers would only consume the 
atmosphere inhaled by one cow. The pig being bred only 
for its flesh, man has no inducement to cram thirty, or even 
more, under one low roof. The sow was not drained and 
drained until disease became its natural inheritance. It was 
not kept, perhaps, for years, and then, in its old age and 
contamination, slaughtered for human food. 
There is then a precedent to justify making penal the 
keeping a cow within the bills of mortality. 
We have yet to consider the inconvenience which would 
result and the benefits that wrnuld accrue from such a mea- 
sure. 
The cow in this country is not a beast of burthen. Its 
services are not likely to be required a| any moment. It is 
simply prized on account of the milk it yields. That is all. 
Now, since the establishment of railways, milk has been 
largely sent to London. If the interest of the majority re- 
quire pure, country milk, yielded by healthy animals, cer- 
tainly that interest would warrant the introduction of a bill 
to the above effect. Were this measure made law T , the source 
of impure flesh supplied to the London markets would be 
in a very great degree destroyed, the lives of many families 
would be conserved, the teas of all London w r ould be bene- 
fited, and the atmosphere in those localities which most need 
such a blessing would be largely purified, for it is notorious 
that cows herd in thickly peopled neighbourhoods ; the 
broad and open thoroughfares being too high rented to afford 
them a lodging. Life and health are surely worthy some 
consideration. 
But let us now endeavour to ascertain how the contem- 
plated law would affect the interest of the London cow- 
keeper. He would, in the first place, be deprived of the 
inducement to crowd many animals into a limited space. 
He would be saved from the continued loss naturally attend- 
ant upon such madness. Under this enactment, he would 
be spared the futile labour of endeavouring to make animals 
live in hot-beds of contagion during seasons of disease. He 
would be banished from a city, where contaminated air and 
deficient shelter are very costly, into the country, where such 
things are not only cheap, but to be obtained in purity. He 
would be freed from the temptation to sell the carcase of 
every beast that dies of unnatural treatment. The incon- 
venience of having to send a distance for a butcher would be 
some check ; but, a better preventive, it is hoped, would be 
found in the improved condition of his stock, and the greater 
