54 
REMARKS ON THE CATTLE SHOW. 
the tendency is always for muscular fibres to diminish in volume, 
and ultimately to disappear. Muscular fibre without fat is not very 
easily digestible; but still the stomach will not reject it. Fat 
alone is, by the great mass of mankind, incapable of being di¬ 
gested, and, to a very many, the attempt to swallow it produces 
an unconquerable nausea. 
It is true that, within the Arctic circles, large quantities of the 
coarsest animal oils and fats are consumed with impunity. This is 
easily to be accounted for, from the excessive cold: but we in this 
kingdom do not rear animals for the purpose of supplying the 
Esquimaux, but plain and simple Europeans, living on a mixed 
diet of flesh and vegetables, nor does the climate produce such 
a degree of exhaustion as to render it necessary for the food to 
be so prepared that no time may be lost in digestion. In plain 
truth, fat is but little more than chyle partially vitalized, or the 
nutritious portion of the food which has been taken in excess, and 
laid by for the future uses of the animal economy; for this fat, 
before it can become meat, i. e., muscle, or form any other com¬ 
ponent part of the body, has again to undergo the process of 
absorption, and further assimilation, before it is fitted for the 
ulterior purposes for which it is destined in the animal economy; 
and which process of assimilation takes place in the transit 
through the lungs, aided, perhaps, by the circulation through the 
liver. Let us understand this, for upon it depends the whole art 
and mystery of fatty deposits. 
The growth and nourishment of the body require a certain pro¬ 
portion of new material, to replace the constant change by absorp¬ 
tion and excretion which is always going on. Let this quantity, 
so required, be represented by a supposititious figure 1: so long as 
the supply of food through the stomach balances this demand, 
neither fatness nor leanness can prevail. Increase the supply of 
nutriment to 2, then what is to become of the overplus'? Either 
it cannot be assimilated, and passes off with the excrements, or it 
is taken up by the lacteals, and transmitted into the circulating 
medium, the blood. 
Now, this redundant supply of nutriment has to be got rid of; 
but howl We have seen that the wants of the system are equal 
but to 1, while we have a quantity equal to 2. If an animal were 
