his own contents, and consequently the glass case is generally crowded; and we fancy many an old-fashioned person is inclined to doubt that his corpus can be converted into such a "doctor's shop" as he here sees solemnly ranged in bottles of all sizes. Can it be possible that the tank, containing sufficient water for a good-sized vivarium, represents the amount of that element in an average man perfectly free from the dropsy? When we are told that a human being of the mean size contains 111lb. of pure liquid fluid, we can understand why there are so many thirsty souls in the world. Then we see his fat in a bottle, looking like so much bear's grease, and find there is 15lb. weight of it. His 15lb. of gelatine looks painfully like the glue of commerce. Still more monstrous does it seem to think that his too solid flesh is reducible into the phosphates of lime, carbonates of lime, and the various sulphates of iron, magnesium, potassium, sodium, silicum, and fluorine which we see paraded before us with such hard, dry, chemical cruelty. But what are those large white blocks meant to represent ? These are the measures of our gases. Thus we are told that a block one foot square represents the amount of oxygen in our economy, but that our hydrogen would occupy 3,000 such blocks! Good gracious! enough to build a pyramid, to say nothing of the chlorine and nitrogen. We enter this Department with feelings of curiosity, but leave it with wonder, and a sense of the reductio ad absurdum to which our chemists have reduced imperial man

himself.

OH, THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD

ENGLAND!*

THE steadfast character of the Englishman is, no doubt, an important element in our national greatness. We are slow to enter on new ways, and equally slow to desert them when once entered. The character of immobility has, however, its serious drawbacks; if a slow-moving man once goes deliberately wrong, he rights himself in as sluggish and deliberate a manner. This is just the case with John Bull in his character as a stock-feeder and breeder. Some years since (we scarcely like to say how many, for our memory of adipose exhibitions on Christmas-eves goes back a long time), the custom came in of bloating out oxen and sheep with oil-cake until they became mountains of fat, the delight of Baker Street, and the ultimate triumph of butchers. Every year saw the evil increase. Hodge with one hand poured in more oil-cake and with the other pointed to the triumphant result, — shapeless, blear-eyed, panting, miserable

This article was written in the year 1858, but, as far as we can see, our fat beasts are as rampant as ever.

beasts, reduced by art to the condition of a huge heap of oil-globules. In vain the Press, with the Times at its head, protested that the true end and aim of the grower of British beef did not consist in converting rump and sirloin into kitchen candles; in vain they pointed to panting pigs and fat-legged oxen as a most melancholy and impotent conclusion to all his labours. In vain the public voice has condemned the system of giving prizes to pigs because they cannot see for fat, and premiums to oxen because their backs are flat as tables with adipose stuffing. The Fat Cattle Exhibition still flourishes, and John Bull pours his oil-cake and other carbonaceous food into his stock, with the same regularity as Betty pours Colza oil into the moderator lamp.

We cannot, however, help attributing this persistence in a bad direction as much to the ignorance of the public as to that of the feeder and breeder. The idea is universally prevalent that the nutritious character of the lean is in a direct ratio to the quantity of the fat. Your streaky sirloin is always looked upon as a "picture ;" and no doubt the presence of fat in moderate quantities is a guarantee that the animal has lived a peaceful enjoyable life, and has been well supplied with the good things thereof.

If the public and the meat-grower would only stop at this point, all would be well; but they seem to consider that they cannot have too much of a good thing, and accordingly prize oxen, pigs, and sheep grow bigger and bigger as Christmas-tide comes round; the kitchen grease-pot flourishes, and

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the public will not be convinced. Mr. F. J. Gant, the assistant-surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital, instead of expressing a mere opinion and many vague generalities, determined some time since to notice the condition of a few of the best prize beasts, and then to follow them up to the slaughter-house, and extract the truth out of them by means of a postmortem inquiry. The result of Mr. Gant's highly interesting labours appeared in several of the town papers, among which may be mentioned the Morning Post and the Observer. He painted what he saw with a picturesque pen worthy of a more noble theme. In looking about him at one of the late Baker Street Exhibitions, he says he could detect no external sign of disease, except in two Devon cows, Class 4, Nos. 32 and 33 prize, each of which was suffering from a disorder of an internal organ :

One of them looked very ill, and laid her head and neck flat on the ground like a greyhound. I pointed out these animals to a man who was drawing water, and I asked him if their condition was one of common occurrence. He said, "I know nothing of them beasties in p'ticler, but it's the case with many on 'em : I knows that."

Having thus accurately noticed the decrepitude of the beast with a scientific eye, and ascertained from the helper that it was illustrative of the class, he passed on to the pigs, those wonderful pigs of Prince Albert that always carried off a prize. We beg our readers to admire the delicacy of the finish with which Mr. Gant gives us a picture of the pathognomonic condition of these animals :

They lay helplessly on their sides, with their noses propped up

M

against each other's backs, as if endeavouring to breathe more easily; but their respiration was loud, suffocating, and at long intervals. Then you heard a short, catching snore, which shook the whole body of the animal, and passed with the motion of a wave over its fat surface, which, moreover, felt cold.

The gold-medal pigs of Mr. Morland, marked "improved Chilton breed," were even in a worse condition than those belonging to His Royal Highness: "their mouths lay open, and their nostrils dilated" at each inspiration. These animals the judges "highly commended."

"When," says Mr. Gant, "I contrasted the enormous bulk of each animal with the short period in which so much fat or flesh had been produced, I certainly indulged in a physiological reflection on the high-pressure work against time which certain internal organs, such as the stomach, liver, heart, and lungs, must have undergone at such a very early age." He therefore determined to follow the animals up after death, which he accordingly did, removing the hearts, livers, and lungs of the various prize beasts from the different slaughter-houses where he had seen them killed, and submitting them to a careful examination, the results of which will perhaps serve to shake the too prevalent idea of the public, that "the thicker the fat the better the flesh."

The first animal he examined was a fat wether belonging to the Duke of Richmond. The heart of this animal weighed ten and a half ounces; "its external surface was very soft, greasy, and of a dirty brownish-yellow colour. . . . On opening the two ventricular cavities, their external surface and substance