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CONSUMPTION OF ANIMAL FOOD IN FRANCE. 
A document from the French Home Office gives the sta¬ 
tistics of animal food consumed in France. The average 
per head all over the empire is 54 kilogrammes per annum, 
being little more than 60 lbs.; yet this is an enormous im¬ 
provement when compared with the consumption of butchers’ 
meat under the first Napoleon; as in 1812 only 17 kilogrammes 
per individual were eaten. Paris is much above the average, 
each inhabitant of the capital being set down as devouring 64 
kilogrammes; Lille, Strasbourg, and some towns in the 
northern departments, being equally carnivorous. The most 
vegetarian districts are Poitou and Le Limousin, where the 
peasantry have not changed their w r retched diet of chestnuts 
since the visit of Arthur Young. They are stinted to 41 
kilogrammes of animal food .—.Edinburgh Journal. 
ALLEGED ORIGIN OF DIPHTHERIA. 
A Correspondent of the Si. James’s Chronicle says , ec I w r as 
in the neighbourhood of Boulogne in the autumn of 1856, 
and had my ears open to every account of the dreadful 
malady which at that period raged with such violence in 
Boulogne as to cause a panic among the inhabitants. I w r as 
informed that the complaint originated as follows. The 
Emperor had established a camp at Ambleteuse,near Boulogne. 
Amongst the horses, that dreadful scourge, glanders, broke out, 
and all endeavours either to cure or stop the malady having 
failed, the result was the breaking up of the camp. Previous 
to this, and upon its departure, the dying and dead horses were 
bought as food for pigs, wffiich at that season were fattening 
both for pork and bacon, and those persons w ho partook of the 
latter for food were attacked with this hitherto unknowm 
malady, w hich rapidly became a communicable one, either as 
epidemic or infectious.” 
