activity is next to _nil_,
and the result is, that their flesh contains less than its natural
proportion of savory ingredients. It is the same with all other animals.
The flesh of the tame rabbit is very insipid, whilst that of the wild
variety is well flavored. Wild fowls cooped up, and rapidly fattened,
lose their characteristic flavor; and when the domesticated birds become
wild their flesh becomes less fatty, and acquires all the peculiarities
of game. Ducks, whether wild or tame, ordinarily yield goodly meat;
but the flesh of some of those that feed on fish smacks strongly of
cod-liver oil. Birds which subsist partly on aromatic berries assimilate
the odour as well as the nutriment of their food. The flesh of grouse
has very commonly a slight flavor of heather. Foster states that in
Tahiti pigs are fed upon fruit, which renders their fat very bland and
their flesh like veal. Animals subjected to certain kinds of mutilation
fatten more rapidly than they do in their natural state. Capons increase
in weight more rapidly than cocks, poulards than hens, bullocks than
bulls, and cows deprived of their ovaries than perfect cows. Why it is
that the flesh of mutilated animals should be fatter and more tender
than that of whole animals, we know not; we only know that such is the
fact. The hunting of animals renders their flesh more tender; the cause
assigned is, that the great exertion of the muscles liquefies their
fibrine, which is the toughest of their constituents. The meat of
animals brought very early to maturity is seldom so valuable as the
naturally developed article. Lawes and Gilbert state that portions of
a sheep that had been fattened upon _steeped_ barley and mangels, and
which gave a very rapid increase, yielded several per cent. less of
cooked meat, and lost more, both in dripping and by the evaporation of
water, than the corresponding portions of a sheep which had been fed
upon _dry_ barley and mangels, and which gave only about half the
amount of gross increase within the same period of time.

Although the digestibility and flavor of meat (and of every other kind
of food) affect its nutritive value, these points are in general of far
less importance than its composition. Potatoes are not so nutritious as
peas, because they contain a smaller amount of fat and flesh-formers;
but they are more digestible. Fish contains less solid matter than
flesh, and is less nutritious, yet a cut of turbot will be, in general