n days of ignorance, dressed in all manners of ways, but usually
fried as nicely as possible, as a preventive against madness. Some
miscreants have sent the flesh of rabid cattle to the market, and _it
has been eaten without harm_; and so, although not very pleasant to
think about, _the milk of the rabid cow may be drunk without the
slightest danger_."

Is it, indeed, possible for any of the secretions of an animal to be in
a healthy state, and fit for human food, after it has had the virus of a
rabid dog circulating in its system for at least _five weeks_?
Furthermore, is it consistent in Mr. Youatt to call those _miscreants_
who send the flesh of rabid cattle to market, when he acknowledges, in
the same breathy that it can be eaten without harm?

According to Mr. Youatt's philosophy, a cow in a rabid state is actually
as good as a cow in a healthy state; for its milk may be drunk with
impunity--the family is _perfectly safe_ who uses it for domestic
purposes; and, moreover, _the flesh of rabid cattle may be eaten without
harm_. What more can be predicated of cattle in the purest state of
health?

STATISTICS.

The number of cattle in Great Britain was estimated by Youatt (1838) at
upwards of eight millions. 160,000 head of cattle are annually sold in
Smithfield alone, without including calves, or the _dead market_, i.e.,
the carcases, sent up from various parts of the country. 1,200,000
sheep, 36,000 pigs, and 18,000 calves, are also sent to Smithfield in
the course of a year.

A tenth part of the sheep and lambs die annually of disease (more than
4,000,000 perished by the rot alone in the winter of 1829-30), and at
least a fifteenth part of the neat cattle are destroyed by inflammatory
fever and milk fever, red water, hoose, and diarrhoea.

If a tithe of the sheep and lambs, and a fifteenth of the neat cattle
_die of disease_, what proportion are _slaughtered and sent to market in
the earlier stages of disease_; and, in fact, in all the stages
antecedent to those which are the immediate cause of death?

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Delineations of the Ox Tribe, by George Vasey

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DELINEATIONS OF THE OX TRIBE ***

***** This file should be named 27975.txt or 27975.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www.gutenberg.org/2/7/9/7/27975/

Produced by Steven Giacomelli, Josephine Paolucci and the
O