and
fat much greater in proportion to size.

VEAL and LAMB, like all young meats, are much less digestible than beef or
mutton. Both should have very white, clear fat; and if that about the
kidneys is red or discolored, the meat should be rejected. Veal has but
sixteen parts of nitrogenous matter to sixty-three of water, and the bones
contain much more gelatine than is found in older animals. But in all
bones much useful carbon and nitrogen is found; three pounds of bone
yielding as much carbon, and six pounds as much nitrogen, as one pound of
meat. Carefully boiled, this nutriment can all be extracted, and flavored
with vegetables, form the basis of an endless variety of soups.

PORK is of all meats the most difficult to digest, containing as it does
so large a proportion of fat. In a hundred parts of the meat, only nine of
nitrogen are found, fat being forty-eight and water thirty-nine, with but
two of salty matters. Bacon properly cured is much more digestible than
pork, the smoke giving it certain qualities not existing in uncured pork.
No food has yet been found which can take its place for army and navy use
or in pioneering. Beef when salted or smoked loses much of its virtue,
and eight ounces of fat pork will give nearly three times as much carbon
or heat-food as the same amount of beef; but its use is chiefly for the
laborer, and it should have only occasional place in the dietary of
sedentary persons.

The pig is liable to many most unpleasant diseases, measles and trichina
spiralis being the most fatal to the eaters of meat thus affected; but the
last--a small animalcule of deadly effect if taken alive into the human
stomach, as is done in eating raw ham or sausage--becomes harmless if the
same meat is long and thoroughly boiled. Never be tempted into eating raw
ham or sausage; and in using pork in any form, try to have some knowledge
of the pig. A clean, well-fed pig in a well-kept stye is a wonderfully
different object from the hideous beast grunting its way in many a
Southern or Western town, feeding on offal and sewage, and rolling in
filth. Such meat is unfit for human consumption, and the eating of it
insures disease.

We come now to another form of meat, that of edible ENTRAILS. This
includes _Tripe_, _Haslet_, or lights, &c. More nitrogen is found here
than in any other portion of the meat. The cheap and abundant supply in
this country has made us, as a people, reject all but the liver. In the
cou