designated,--there is no doubt of the
practical fact, that the best butcher cannot sell any thing but the best
fatted beef; and of whatever age, size, or shape a half-fatted ox may
be, he is never selected by judges as fit for human food. Hence, a
well-fatted animal always commands a better price per pound than one
imperfectly fed, and the parts selected as the primest beef are
precisely the parts which contain the largest deposits of fat. The rump,
the crop, and the sirloin, the very favorite 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, the fact is, practically,
exactly the reverse. Where there is the 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 is used for a different
purpose; in fact, so far from fat's 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 which 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 has been stated, by a _roundness_ of form,
as opposed to the _fatness_ 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 oily parts
of plants are deposited and laid up as fat; and, when vigor and strength
fail, this 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 uncon