CATTLE. 
106 
cuts, which always command from twenty to twenty-five per cent, more 
than any other part of the ox, are just those parts on which the largest 
quantities of fat are found ; so that instead of the taste and fashion of 
the age being against the excessive fattening of animals, it is, practical- 
ly, exactly the reverse. Where there is most fat there is the best lean; 
where there is the greatest amount of muscle without its share of fat, 
that part is accounted inferior, and used for a different purpose; in 
fact, so far from fat being a disease, it is a condition of muscle, neces- 
sary to its utility as food — a source of luxury to the rich, and of com- 
fort to the poor, furnishing a nourishing and healthy diet for their 
families. 
Fattening is a secretive power which grazing animals possess, ena- 
bling them to lay by a store of the superfluous food they take for sea- 
sons of cold or scarcity. It collects round the angular bones of the 
animal, and gives the appearance of rotundity ; hence the tendency to 
deposit fat is indicated, as we have stated, by a roundness of form, as 
opposed to the flatness of a milk-secreting animal. But its greatest use 
is, that it is a store of heat-producing aliment, laid up for seasons of 
scarcity and want.’ The food of animals for the most part may be said 
to consist of a saccharine, an oleaginous, and an albuminous principle. 
To the first belong all the starchy, saccharine, and gummy parts of the 
plants, which undergo changes in the digestive organs similar to fer- 
mentation before they can be assimilated in the system ; by them also 
animal heat is sustained. In indolent animals the only parts of plants 
are deposited and laid up as fat ; and, when vigor and strength fail, it 
is taken up, and also used in breathing to supply the place of the con- 
sumed saccharine matter. The albuminous, or gelatinous principle of 
plants, is mainly useful in forming muscle, while the ashes of plants, the 
unconsumable parts, are for the supply, mainly, of bone, hair, and horn, 
but also of muscle and of blood, and to supply the waste, which con- 
tinually goes on. Now, there are several qualities which are essentially 
characteristic of a disposition to fatten. There have not, as yet, been 
any book-rules laid down, as in the case of Mr. Guenon’s indications of 
milking cows; but there are marks so definite and well understood, 
that they are comprehended and acted upon by every grazier, although 
they are by no means easy to describe. It is by skillful acumen that 
the grazier acquires his knowledge, and not by theoretical rules; obser- 
vation, judgment, and experience, powerful perceptive faculties and a 
keen and minute discrimination and comparison, are essential to his 
success. 
The first indication he relies on is the touch. It is the absolute crite- 
rion of quality, which is supposed to be the keystone of perfection in 
all animals, whether for the pail or the butcher. The skin is so in- 
timately connected with the internal organs, in all animals, that it is 
questionable whether even the schools of medicine might not make more 
use of it, in a diagnosis of disease. Of physiological tendencies in cat- 
tle, however, it is of the last and most vital importance. It must neither 
be thick, nor hard, nor adhere firmly to the muscles. If it is so, the 
animal is a hard grazer, a difficult and obstinate feeder — no skillful 
man will purchase her — she must go to a novice, and even to him at a 
