cuts, which always command from twenty to twenty-five per cent. more than any other part of the ox, are just those parts on which the largest quantities of fat are found; so that instead of the taste and fashion of the age being against the excessive fattening of animals, it is, practically, exactly the reverse. Where there is most fat there is the best lean; where there is the greatest amount of muscle without its share of fat, that part is accounted inferior, and used for a different purpose; in fact, so far from fat being a disease, it is a condition of muscle, necessary to its utility as food-a source of luxury to the rich, and of comfort to the poor, furnishing a nourishing and healthy diet for their families.

Fattening is a secretive power which grazing animals possess, enabling them to lay by a store of the superfluous food they take for seasons of cold or scarcity. It collects round the angular bones of the animal, and gives the appearance of rotundity; hence the tendency to deposit fat is indicated, as we have stated, by a roundness of form, as opposed to the flatness of a milk-secreting animal. But its greatest use is, that it is a store of heat-producing aliment, laid up for seasons of scarcity and want. The food of animals for the most part may be said to consist of a saccharine, an oleaginous, and an albuminous principle. To the first belong all the starchy, saccharine, and gummy parts of the plants, which undergo changes in the digestive organs similar to fermentation before they can be assimilated in the system; by them also animal heat is sustained. In indolent animals the only parts of plants are deposited and laid up as fat; and, when vigor and strength fail, it is taken up, and also used in breathing to supply the place of the consumed saccharine matter. The albuminous, or gelatinous principle of plants, is mainly useful in forming muscle, while the ashes of plants, the unconsumable parts, are for the supply, mainly, of bone, hair, and horn, but also of muscle and of blood, and to supply the waste, which continually goes on. Now, there are several qualities which are essentially characteristic of a disposition to fatten. There have not, as yet, been any book-rules laid down, as in the case of Mr. Guénon's indications of milking cows; but there are marks so definite and well understood, that they are comprehended and acted upon by every grazier, although they are by no means easy to describe. It is by skillful acumen that the grazier acquires his knowledge, and not by theoretical rules; observation, judgment, and experience, powerful perceptive faculties and a keen and minute discrimination and comparison, are essential to his

success.

The first indication he relies on is the touch. It is the absolute criterion of quality, which is supposed to be the keystone of perfection in all animals, whether for the pail or the butcher. The skin is so intimately connected with the internal organs, in all animals, that it is questionable whether even the schools of medicine might not make more use of it, in a diagnosis of disease. Of physiological tendencies in cattle, however, it is of the last and most vital importance. It must neither be thick, nor hard, nor adhere firmly to the muscles. If it is so, the animal is a hard grazer, a difficult and obstinate feeder-no skillful man will purchase her-she must go to a novice, and even to him at a

price so low as to tempt him to be a purchaser. On the other hand, the skin must not be thin, like paper, nor flaccid, nor loose in the hand, nor flabby. This is the opposite extreme, and is indicative of delicateness, bad, flabby flesh, and possibly of inaptitude to retain the fat. It must be elastic and velvety, soft and pliable, presenting to the touch a gentle resistance, but so delicate as to give pleasure to the sensitive hand—a skin, in short, which seems at first to give an indentation from the pressure of the fingers, but which again rises to its place by a gentle elasticity. The hair is of nearly as much importance as the skin. A hard skin will have straight and stiff hair; it will not have a curl, but be thinly and lankly distributed equally over the surface. A proper grazing animal will have a mossy coat, not absolutely curled, but having a disposition to a graceful curl, a semifold, which presents a waving inequality, but as different from a close and straightly-laid coat, as it is from one standing off the animal at right angles, a strong symptom of disease. It will also, in a thriving animal, be licked here and there with its tongue, a proof that the skin is duly performing its functions. There must be also the full and goggle eye, bright and pressed outward by the fatty bed below, because, as this is a part where nature always provides fat, an animal capable of developing it to any considerable extent will have its indications here, at least when it exists in

excess.

So much for feeding qualities in the animal, and their conformations. indicative of this kindly disposition. Next come such formations of the animal itself as are favorable to the growth of fat, other things being equal. There must be size where large weights are expected. Christmas-beef, for instance, is expected to be large as well as fat. The symbol of festivity should be capacious as well as prime in quality. But it is so much a matter of choice and circumstance with the grazier that profit alone will be his guide. The axiom will be, however, as a general rule, that the better the grazing soil the larger the animal may be; the poorer the soil the smaller the animal. Small animals are unquestionably much more easily fed, and they are well known by experienced men to be those best adapted to second-rate feeding pastures. But beyond this there must be breadth of carcass. This is indicative of fattening perhaps beyond all other qualifications. If rumps are favorite joints, and produce the best price, it is best to have the animal which will grow the longest, the broadest, and the best rump; the same of crop, and the same of sirloin; and not only so, but breadth is essential to the consumption of that quantity of food which is necessary to the development of a large amount of fat in the animal. Thus a deep wide chest, favorable for the respiratory and circulating functions, enables it to consume a large amount of food, to burn up the sugary matter, and to deposit the fatty matter-as then useless for respiration, but hereafter to be prized. A full level crop will be of the same physiological utility, while a broad and open framework at the hips will afford scope for the action of the liver and kidneys.

There are other points also of much importance; the head must be small and fine; its special use is indicative of the quick fattening of the animal so constructed, and also it is indicative of the bones being small

and the legs short. For constitutional powers, the beast should have his ribs extended well toward the thigh-bones or hips, so as to leave as little unprotected space as possible. There must be no angular or abrupt points; all must be round, and broad, and parallel. Any depression in the lean animal, will give a deficient deposit of flesh and fat at that point, when sold to the butcher, and thus deteriorate its value; and hence the animal must be round and full. But either fancy, or accident, or skill-we will not pretend to say which-has associated symmetry with quality and conformation, as a point of great importance in animals calculated for fattening; and there is no doubt that, to a certain extent, this is so. The beast must be a system of mathematical lines. To the advocate of symmetry the setting on of a tail will be a condemning fault; indeed, the ridge of the back, like a straight line, with the outline of the belly exactly parallel, viewed from the side, and a depth and squareness when viewed from behind, which remind us of a geometrical cube rather than a vital economy, may be said to be the indications of excellence in a fat ox. These qualities are inherent in some breeds; there may be cases and instances in all the superior breeds, and in most there may be failures.

By far the first in the list for feeding excellence are—

The Short-Horn or Durham Breed.-The origin of the breed is involved in great obscurity. They are supposed by some to be traced into Iolderñess; and to have been imported from Holstein, according to others; from continental Europe they certainly seem to have come; and, being successively improved by a variety of breeders, they have ended in that distinct race of animals, extraordinary beyond all others for their astonishing propensities to feed. Others, again, refer their origin to a native race of cattle called the Teeswater, because they have from time immemorial inhabited the valley which the Tees has formed by its washings down of the mountain limestone rocks, in which it has its origin; these, it is said, being crossed by the Holderness importations, gradually became a new race.

The late Mr. Bates traces back the short-horns to a breed in the possession of the Aslabies of Studley, and the Rev. H. Berry to an improvement in the East Riding of Yorkshire, by the importation of a breed from Holland by Sir W. St. Quintin of Scampston. Of these early ages of the short-horns, however, it is hardly necessary to say more than this—that a breed from time immemorial inhabited the valley of the Tees, and, trained and bred to feed, for a vast succession of generations, on its fertile deposits, acquired the habits of speedy fat-forming; for in these valleys, where hay alone will feed the largest ox, the production of fat would be so far an object that breeders would always select the best and easiest feeding animals; and thus the character of the district, through a number of centuries, might easily lay the groundwork of that improvement which the Milbanks, the Greys, the Booths, the Coates, and, above all, the Collings, have effected.

We will give the latest description of the qualities of the modern short-horn from the most recent authority, Mr. Dickson. After referring to the general symmetry of the frame and its delicate color, either deepred cream-colored, white, or delicate roan-the latter the most fashion

able and indeed prevailing color-he speaks of it as possessing "the mellowest touch, supported on small clean limbs, showing, like those of the greyhound and the race-horse, the union of strength with fineness, and ornamented with a small, lengthy, tapering head, neatly set on a broad, firm, deep neck; furnished with a small muzzle, wide nostrils, prominent mildly-beaming eyes; thin, large, veiny ears, set near the crown of the head, and protected in front with semicircularly-bent white or waxy-colored short, smooth, pointed horns; all these several parts combine to form a symmetrical harmony which has never been surpassed in beauty and sweetness by any other species of the domesticated ox."

Keeping in mind what was said to be the perfection of a fat animal, the same authority, speaking of the short-horn, says: "We have a straight level back from behind the horns to the top of the tail, full buttocks, and a projecting brisket; we have, in short, the rectangular form; we have also the level line across the hook-bones (hip), and the level top of the shoulder across the ox, and perpendicular lines down the hind and fore legs on both sides; these constituting the square form when the ox is viewed before and behind; and we have straight parallel lines from the sides of the shoulders along the utmost parts of the ribs and the sides of the hind quarters; and we have these lines connected at their ends by others of shorter and equal length across the end of the rump and the top of the shoulder; thus constituting the rectangular form of the ox when viewed from above down the back."

It will be very wide from our purpose to show either the immense amount of fat which has at one time or another accumulated on the backs of these wonderful animals, or the speed with which this has been done. Neither would it tend much to elucidate the principles of breeding or grazing to detail at any length the prices which short-horns have commanded and do command.

Nor is it in their rapid fattening alone that this race of cattle excels. They are, beyond all question, the most remarkable for early maturity. Fat deposits are generally the result of a mature state of the animal. There are few animals who will lay it on, to any degree, at least, until they are fully formed. The short-horn is an exception. They commence the fat-forming process as calves. This seems to increase with their growth, and at a year old they have all the semblance of cows. The feeders of short-horns, instead of keeping them to three, four, or five years of age, fatten them and sell them off at from two to two and a half years; they can thus turn off one-half more at least, if not a greater proportion, of beef, from their farms or their stalls, than could possibly be done with any other breed. Hence they have quick returns and large amounts of beef for the food-consumer. We will not deny that the short-horn requires good keep, and shelter, and care. needs nourishing diet; but she pays for all, for she is a cow when another is a calf-the ox is fat when the other is growing. Hence the shorthorn stands the very first on the list of the fat-producing breeds of cattle.

She

The Hereford Breed.-This is a middle-horn breed of cattle, upon which a good deal of pains has lately been taken. The success of short