140 MR. youatt’s introductory lecture 
may calculate the number of sheep and oxen, and the money 
they are worth, at a much higher rate; at a rate so much 
higher, that I dare not state it without giving you the proofs. 
There are sold at Smithfield market in the course of a year, 
160,000 beasts, 18,000 calves, 1,200,000 sheep, and 36,000 pig’s; 
which, averaging the beasts at £18 each, the calves at £2, the 
sheep at £l..l0s., and the pigs at £2, will give a sum total of 
more than £5,000,000 ; exclusive of the dead-market—the car¬ 
casses which are sent up from various parts of the country—and 
which amount to a considerable sum. 
That I may not appear to exaggerate the gross amount, I will 
suppose that stock to the amount of £5,000,000 is annually 
sold in Smithfield; then I will suppose a tenth part of the meat 
consumed in England and Wales to find its way to the markets of 
the metropolis; and consequently we have an annual consump¬ 
tion of animal food equal to £50,000,000. I farther calculate, that 
one-fourth of the stock is annually destroyed, which gives us a 
sum total of £200,000,000 sterling as the value of our live cattle. 
It has farther been computed, that more than a tenth part 
of the sheep and lambs die annually of disease. More than 
2,000,000 of sheep perished of the rot during the last winter. 
More than a fifteenth part of neat cattle are also lost by the blood, 
redwater, dropping after calving, the hoove, and rottenness. I 
will take the whole at a fifteenth part; and I have the startling 
sum of more than thirteen millions of money annually lost to the 
country through the diseases of domestic animals. 
Is there no provision against thisl Has the legislature never 
interfered to lessen this waste of national wealth ? Have the 
landed proprietors, the chief owners of this valuable portion of 
our island's wealth, formed themselves into no societies, and 
founded no seminaries for the examination of the cause of all 
this, and for the education of veterinary practitioners w ho shall 
devote their talents and their time to the study of the diseases 
of sheep and cattle'? No. A principle of worse than Turkish 
fatalism seems to have oppressed and paralysed the agriculturist. 
He is accustomed to these losses: he makes up his mind that he 
must bear them; and he takes no step to guard against them. 
The agricultural societies now and then offer premiums for the 
best essays on the treatment of certain diseases; otherwise they 
are employed, usefully and profitably certainly, in discussing the 
best way of improving the breed oi cattle, or improving their 
lands; but the diseases of cattle and sheep are subjects which 
they do not understand ; they are evils against which they think 
it is of no avail to struggle; and things go on just as they will. 
The loss of agricultural property by the mortality of cattle and 
sheep has tw o grand sources, and 1 know not which is the worst. 
