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Tour in England, No. 10. 
TOUR IN ENGLAND, No. 10. 
Smithfield Market—animals there , and the 
breeds most suitable to raise in America for 
meat to supply the English market ,—The larg¬ 
est, and perhaps the most interesting market 
for the stock breeder to visit in Great Britain, 
is that of Smithfield ; which in days of yore, 
was really what its name purports, a large 
field in the suburbs of the town, belonging 
to the person after whom it was named. But 
now the city has spread over and all around, 
and it has become the very heart of London. 
It is a sort of double oblong square, into 
which pour six streets, surrounded on all 
sides by lofty buildings, presenting some¬ 
thing such a scene as the reader will find 
pictured below. 
Smithfield Stock Market.—(Fig. 27.) 
Smithfield is a cattle market on Mondays 
and Fridays; the rest of the week it is used 
for hay, straw, and other country products. 
Monday, however, is the great day, when 
there is a much larger show of animals than 
on Friday, and it is curious to see what a 
motley throng it then presents. Double 
rows of posts and strong bars morticed into 
them surround the open square on two sides, 
to which the cattle are tied, while all the rest 
of the space is occupied with pens for pigs, 
and thousands of sheep ; there being a much 
greater consumption of mutton in England 
than pork. For the purpose of getting a 
fuller idea of the show, we usually made our 
visits here early in the morning, when it was 
so crowded, that we frequently found it dif¬ 
ficult to move about; and such a hubbub and 
confusion of sounds rose up there from the 
voices of men, the barking of shepherds’ dogs, 
and bleating and lowing of herds, as to al¬ 
most set the fresh visitor beside himself, 
and half addle his head. 
That the reader may have some more defi¬ 
nite idea of the number of animals brought 
here for sale on market days, we give from 
McCulloch’s Dictionary, the actual consump¬ 
tion in London, for the year 1830, when it 
had a population of about a million and a 
half. 
