116 
MISCELLANEA. 
Conveyance of Fat Cattle. 
UNUSUAL labour unavoidably produces a wasting of the animal 
substance. The practice of driving fat cattle over considerable 
distances was, doubtless, resorted to in the absence of any means 
of conveyance whose cost was tolerable ; but that it should be con- 
tinued where railroad or steam-boat transit can be employed must 
be attributed to blind adherence to usage, and neglect of the 
plainest principles on which the profit of the parties concerned de- 
pend. A long journey will, of course, walk flesh and fat off the 
bones, where it had been laid with all the skill of the grazier, and 
at no little care and cost. This fact is presented with the pre- 
cision and authority of actual experiment in the sailing-bill of 
the Enterprise steamer, which plies between London and Boston. 
It is there stated that Mr. D. Martin, of Wainfleet, sent five sheep 
to London to walk the whole distance on the road, and killed five 
others at home. The two lots were of exactly equal weight (858 lbs.) 
when alive The carcasses were weighed when dead, when it was 
found that the sheep which had walked to London weighed 435 lbs., 
and their loose fat 60 lbs.; while the five killed at home reached 
489 lbs., their loose fat weighing 74| lbs. The total difference of 
weight amounted to 68J lbs., or 14 per cent, of the original weight 
of the mutton ; and this was evidently the loss of meat occasioned 
by compelling the five sheep to walk from Lincolnshire to London. 
It is hardly necessary to point out the consequences of this import- 
ant fact. 14 lbs. of every cwt. of the best of human food are abso- 
lutely thrown away in the performance of such a journey by the 
living animals; not a single human being is benefited by the 
waste or the process. To abolish the practice would be equivalent 
to adding many thousands of acres to the grazing districts of the 
kingdom, and those of a kind to require no expense for manage- 
ment. Nor is this all. At the end of so long a journey, the ani- 
mal, unused to effort, is wearied and diseased, and its flesh is, to 
say the least, less wholesome than it ought to be as human food. 
There can now be no excuse for the continuance of this practice ; 
or, if some districts still remain unprovided with railways, the want 
is likely to be very speedily supplied. Steam conveyance, both 
coasting and inland, now supplies, or soon will supply, every 
grazing district with the means of sending its living produce, at 
reasonable cost, to the great seats of population, without waste or 
deterioration, and without unnecessary suffering to animals destined 
to die for the sustenance of man. But why should not the advance 
make another step 1 Why should these animals be killed in the 
crowded yards and dingy cellars of the metropolis, where causes of 
