THE KNACKERS AT MONTFAUCON. 
603 
Englishman. The flesh is used likewise as manure, and in the 
manufacture of prussian blue. A horse has from three hundred 
to four hundred pounds of flesh, which yields in this way a pro¬ 
fit of from thirty to nearly forty shillings. 
8th.—The sinews or tendons being separated from the mus¬ 
cles, the smaller ones are sold fresh to the glue-makers, and the 
larger dried and disposed of in great quantities for the same 
purpose. A horse yields about one pound of dried tendons, 
worth two pence three farthings. 
9th.—Of the bones nearly three hundred and fifty thousand 
pounds are annually sold : the remainder serves for fuel, and 
chiefly for melting the fat. A considerable quantity is sold to 
cutlers, fan-makers, and other workmen who use bones; but 
more to the manufacturers of sal-ammoniac and ivorv-black. 
The pound of bones sells for about a farthing English ; and as a 
single horse produces ninety pounds of bones, the profit is about 
one shilling and eleven pence. The bones would, how^ever, yield 
much more if they were ground in mills, as is done in Auvergne 
and Strasburg; for the cwt. of bone-meal, an excellent manure, 
fetches nearly seven shillings and sixpence. 
10th.—The small guts are wrought into coarse strings for 
lathes, &c. The other entrails are piled up, and sold in a state 
of putrefaction as manure. A two-horse load brings from four 
shillings and sixpence to nine shillings. 
11th.—Even the maggots, w'hich breed in great numbers in 
the putrid refuse, are not lost. Small pieces of flesh and entrails, 
to the height of about half a foot, and slightly covered with 
straw, are piled up in the sun. The flies, attracted immediately, 
deposit their eggs in these, and, in a few days’ time, the whole 
becomes a living mass, the putrefying substance being reduced 
to a very small quantity. The maggots are sold by measure, 
partly as baits for fishing, but chiefly as food for fowls and phea¬ 
sants. The entrails of a single horse generate these maggots in 
such plenty, as to yield a profit of nearly one shilling and six¬ 
pence. IMany, besides, are metamorphosed into the musca car- 
naria, caesar, and vivipara ; so that there are, at Montfauqon, 
great swarms of these flies, which again attract vast multitudes 
of swallows, and make the neighbourhood of Montfau^on the 
favourite shooting-ground of the Parisian sportsmen. 
12th.—The rats at Montfau^on play a part equally important. 
As these animals find here abundance of food, and the females 
bring forth every year from twelve to eighteen young, there is an 
innumerable host of them in the place. Sixteen thousand have 
been killed in four weeks in the same room, without any decrease 
being perceived. They undermine the walls, so that the build- 
