those wonderful pigs of Prince Albert that always carried off a prize. We beg our readers to admire the delicacy of the finish with which Mr. Gant gives us a picture of the pathognomonic condition of these animals:-"They lay helplessly on their sides, with their noses propped up against each other's backs, as if endeavouring to breathe more easily; but their respiration was loud, suffocating, and at long intervals. Then you heard a short, catching snore, which shook the whole body of the animal, and passed with the motion of a wave over its fat surface, which, moreover, felt cold."

The gold-medal pigs of Mr. Morland, marked “improved Chilton breed," were even in a worse condition than those belonging to His Royal Highness: "their mouths lay open, and their nostrils dilated" at each inspiration. These animals the judges "highly commended."

"When," says Mr. Gant, "I contrasted the enormous bulk of each animal with the short period in which so much fat or flesh had been produced, I certainly indulged in a physiological reflection on the high-pressure work against time which certain internal organs, such as the stomach, liver, heart, and lungs, must have undergone at such a very early age." He therefore determined to follow the animals up after death, which he accordingly did, removing the hearts, livers, and lungs of the various prize beasts from the different slaughter-houses where he had seen them killed, and submitting them to a careful examination, the results of which will perhaps serve to shake the too prevalent idea of the public, that "the thicker the fat the better the flesh."

The first animal he examined was a fat wether belonging to the Duke of Richmond. The heart of this animal weighed ten and a half ounces; "its external surface was very soft, greasy, and of a dirty brownish-yellow colour. . . . . On opening the two ventricular cavities, their external surface and substance were equally soft, greasy, and yellow throughout-an appearance due to the infusion of fat between the muscular fibres, of which the heart should chiefly consist. The substitution of fat for muscle is proved by the microscope to have ensued, for when examined, the muscular fibres no longer presented the characteristic cross markings (stria of anatomists), but the fibrilla within the fibres were entirely broken up by bright globules of fat. The healthy structure of

the heart had, therefore, thoroughly degenerated by its conversion into fat." Another fat wether, bred by Lord Berners, had a heart degenerated into fat, "a gorged liver," "flabby lungs," with "nodules of the size of a kidney-bean bedded in them."

Mr. Morland's "improved Chilton breed" pig had an enlarged left ventricle, a liver of a dark livid colour, while the veins of the left lobe of the liver were congested. The Prince Consort's Devon heifer presented a heart with the substance of both ventricles "completely degenerated into fat." The Earl of Leicester's three-year-old Devon ox had an equally fat heart. A short-horned ox, "the best in any of the class," had a heart whose left ventricle "had undergone conversion into fat." One spot near the apex of the left ventricle had given way, and a blunt probe could be readily introduced through the substance of the ventricle almost into the cavity, the thin lining of the cavity alone preventing the instantaneous death of the animal. The "best beast," a Devon ox, bred by the Prince Consort, presented a heart partially converted into fat; the intestines, within about a foot of the termination of the lower bowel, presenting a fatty-like mass.”

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Such were the pathological discoveries made by Mr. Gant in his examination of the viscera only. The conclusion that gentleman comes to—a conclusion in which he is strengthened by the testimony of Mr. Quekett—is, that the conversion of the heart into fat is the most prominent disease and the unfailing result produced by our present system of rearing and feeding stock.

Against this most important conclusion it will be vain, however, for the butcher to battle. The common sense of the country must see that a beast with a spoiled heart cannot be a healthy one; that the unworkable heart and oppressed lungs can only languidly circulate unhealthy blood; and that the various tissues built up out of the vitiated life-fluid must be unwholesome and void of those nutritious qualities which, at present, they are supposed to possess in an eminent degree. Now that fattening for the wasteful grease-pot is condemned by benevolence, and the last word of science, we trust to see prize beasts "grow small by degrees and beautifully less ;" and if the exertions of Mr. Gant should lead to this result, he will deserve the thanks of the country, for it is of the utmost importance

that healthy meat be supplied to a nation like ourselves, which depends for its strength upon its proper supply of animal food. Indeed, we are glad to see that in the recent Agricultural Show there was a tendency to give the prizes to good points rather than to the mere obesity we have condemned.

Meanwhile, however, a glance at the report just published by the Veterinary Department of the Privy Council, shows that now-a-days the "roast beef of Old England " is, as a matter of fact, more frequently the roast beef of "Old" France, Denmark, Belgium, Prussia, Sweden, or Spain. For five years past we have received upwards of a million cattle and sheep every season from foreign parts; and if the imports go on increasing, as they seem likely to do, our favourite old national song will have to be re-written and adapted to our altered circumstances. In spite of this,

however, we are threatened with a "meat famine,” in consequence of the regulations enforced to prevent the introduction of diseased cattle; and it has been remarked that to people of William Cobbett's way of thinking—if any such still exist -that calamity would almost justify a revolution.

The veterinary report now issued by the Privy Council ought to calm the fears of those who were alarmed by the menaces of the foreign cattle-dealers to put an end to the trade. So far from a meat famine impending in spite of the harassing restrictions complained of, the importation of cattle from abroad has gone on increasing. Unhappily, the price of meat has kept steadily rising also; indeed, if it goes on at its present rate, the time may come when chops and steaks will be sold in London as the Jesuits' bark was in Paris during the reign of Louis XIV., weight for weight with gold. And yet, according to the report before us, "no direct connection has been shown to exist between the wholesale price of meat and the price the ordinary consumer is obliged to pay for it." Whether the supply from abroad be plentiful or not, the price to the consumer tends always to rise, and never to fall. So that, if the restrictions on imports were done away with to-morrow, it is more than doubtful whether the poor man's dinner would be made any cheaper. The explanation is, that a keen crowd of middle men stand between the producer and the consumer, and it is their profits which, added to the price of a beefsteak, nearly double its real market value. Bread will never again be

more than comparatively dear, but meat will never be cheap; and it is clear that the middle and lower classes will be more and more debarred from that aliment, and be compelled to depend mainly upon vegetable and farinaceous sustentation.

Nevertheless, it appears that the trade in fresh meat from America has gone on flourishing. Glasgow and London have been constantly supplied with American beef and mutton brought over in carcase. The first sale of dead meat was held on the 5th of June last, when one hundred carcases of beef and seventy-two of mutton were disposed of. Since then there has never been a smaller supply, and it is said that on the average one hundred and fifty carcases are sold weekly. Altogether since the importation began 1,250,000lb. of dead American meat have been sold in Glasgow in a fresh state. Arrangements are being made for increasing the dead meat supply, which is expected to be not less than two hundred carcases weekly during the winter months. The importation of dead meat into London is on a still larger scale, for we have for some time received upwards of two hundred carcases a week, and shall receive considerably more in the colder months of the year. One of the Guion line of steamers recently arrived in Liverpool, bringing with her one thousand quarters of meat, part of which duly found its way to the metropolitan market. The choice of Liverpool as a port from which to supply the London market with American meat, is made because the voyage by sea to London would occupy so much more time; the Channel and other dues are also heavy, and there is more convenience for landing large cargoes of such character at Liverpool than here. Having stood the test of such a summer as that last experienced, this trade in dead meat cannot but have a considerable future before it. The quality of the American beef may be judged from the fact that the Farmer gives the price of a living beast as £33 in Glasgow on arrival, and the advantages of sending the meat dead rather than living, when once it is proved that it can be kept sweet, are too obvious to require to be detailed.

MUDIE'S CIRCULATING LIBRARY.

TWENTY years is sufficient in these days entirely to revolutionize any speciality, trade, or profession, or indeed, for the matter of that, any mundane thing. If in our youth we had been asked to point out a particularly sleepy occupation on a level with the exertions of a genteel and advanced spinsterhood, we should have reverted instinctively to the circulating library, whose spiriting was generally performed by some meagre and somewhat sharp-visaged virgin in spectacles. The flow of well-thumbed fiction which she mildly regulated never gave signs of an uncontrollable exuberance of life, and the books of travel or adventure she dispensed speedily, became fossilized on her shelves. The circulating library of those days was a thing outside the bustling, active sphere of trade-a quiet eddy, as it were, in which placid minds took refuge. In these days, however, when the demands of society create such numberless new schemes, and erect into first-class occupations what were before insignificant handicrafts; when match-making has arrived at the dignity of a great manufacture, a single employer often consuming annually a dozen shiploads of timber, and great fortunes are made out of steel pens, is it to be wondered at that the spirit of enterprise has penetrated even into the sleepy old circulating library, and transformed it at once into a very mill-race of literary life?

Standing the other day at the counter at Mudie's, where the subscribers exchange their books, we were a witness of the transformation one enterprising and intelligent man has wrought in this branch of trade. The constant flood of people that are discharged from broughams and chariots into this emporium of books reminds one more of the Pantheon