Mil KARKEEK’S LECTURE ON FAT AND MUSCLE. 223 
The lecturer then shewed that the distinguishing character of' 
a well-bred animal depended not so much on the external as on 
the internal structure — such as the lungs, liver, spleen, kidneys, 
stomach, intestines, &c. 
Here the lecturer made a singular statement: — “That Profes- 
sor Playfair, in his lecture before the English Agricultural So- 
ciety, had proved, what all butchers knew perfectly well, that an 
1 ox or sheep having small lungs and small livers will fatten more 
readily than those having large lungs and large livers;’ but he, 
the lecturer, was also convinced, that in proportion as an animal 
became fat , did those organs actually diminish iti size. He drew 
his conclusions, he said, from examining a great number of stall- 
fed cattle, chiefly of the Devon breed, averaging from G cwt. to 
10 cwt. of beef. He had seen them slaughtered at all stages of 
reeding, from four to eight months, and invariably found that ac- 
cording to the amount of fat which they possessed were those 
organs reduced in size. This was a circumstance never stated 
before by any author, although the butchers knew this also from 
frequent experience, and he had gathered his information by 
visiting their slaughter-houses. 
He explained this by reference to the changes of particles con- 
stantly going on in the majority of the tissues of a living body, 
instancing the effect of exercise on the bulk of the muscles 
of the arm of a blacksmith, and in the arm of a person unaccus- 
tomed to labour. The production of fat he had already shewn 
to be the consequence of the organs of nutrition not performing 
their natural offices. The lungs, then, of a stall-fed animal 
adapted their size to the quantity of oxygen consumed, and the 
liver to the quantity of bile secreted; and it was also a remark- 
able coincidence, which would account for the diminution of the 
intestines in a fatted animal, that the fatter it became, the less 
food it consumed. 
The lecturer drew some very important practical deductions 
from these observations ; for if they were true, he said, — the effect 
of breeding from fat animals, or from animals disposed quickly to 
become so, — -function here would react on organization. By reac- 
tion , he meant, when an organ, as the lungs, for instance, became 
diminished in consequence of the animal becoming fat from not 
performing its natural office, its diminished structure, in breeding, 
would in some degree be produced in the offspring; hence the 
reaction , and if the same system is pursued, particularly in breed- 
ing from the nearest affinities at the same time, the effect would 
be more speedily produced. The lecturer here alluded to the 
improved short and long-horned cattle — the improved Herefords 
— the improved Devons, as well as the new Leicester sheep, all 
