cut surface, a darker red near the bone, and
slightly marbled with fat. Beef contains, in a hundred parts, nearly
twenty of nitrogen, seventy-two of water, four of fat, and the remainder
in salts of various descriptions. The poorer the quality of the beef, the
more it will waste in cooking; and its appearance before cooking is also
very different from that of the first quality, which, though looking
moist, leaves no stain upon the hand. In poor beef, the watery part seems
to separate from the rest, which lies in a pool of serous bloody fluid.
The gravy from such beef is pale and poor in flavor; while the fat, which
in healthy beef is firm and of a delicate yellow, in the inferior quality
is dark yellow and of rank smell and taste. Beef is firmer in texture and
more satisfying to the stomach than any other form of meat, and is usually
considered more strengthening.

MUTTON is a trifle more digestible, however. A healthy person would not
notice this, the digestive power in health being more than is necessary
for the ordinary meal; but the dyspeptic will soon find that mutton gives
his stomach less work. Its composition is very nearly the same as that of
beef; and both when cooked, either by roasting or boiling, lose about a
third of their substance, and come to us with twenty-seven parts of
nitrogen, fifteen of fat, fifty-four of water, and three of salty matters.

Mountain sheep and cattle have the finest-flavored meat, and are also
richest in nitrogenous matter. The mountain mutton of Virginia and North
Carolina is as famous as the English Southdown; but proper feeding
anywhere will make a new thing of the ordinary beef and mutton. When our
cattle are treated with decent humanity,--not driven days with scant food
and water, and then packed into cars with no food and no water, and driven
at last to slaughter feverish and gasping in anguish that we have no right
to permit for one moment,--we may expect tender, wholesome, well-flavored
meat. It is astonishing that under present conditions it can be as good as
it is.

In well-fed animals, the fat forms about a third of the weight, the
largest part being in the loin. In mutton, one-half is fat; in pork,
three-quarters; while poultry and game have very little.

The amount of bone varies very greatly. The loin and upper part of the leg
have least; nearly half the entire weight being in the shin, and a tenth
in the carcass. In the best mutton and pork, the bones are smaller,