BR RE a hI

466 LIVE STOCK:

and quantity: The best practical proof of this is, that the former can always be afforded at consider- ably less money per pound. The larger species being equally well-shaped with the smaller, and brought to perfection, it is evident, will always pay by their superior weight, for a superior quantity of food, und Jonger time, if feeding at all be profit- able. If you put up to fatten a small-boned, tor- toise-shaped animal, you acquire nothing but fat, for your good meat; nature affords you no growth, and the carcase, when ripe, perhaps possesses not a larger quantity of solid lean flesh, than when in its store state; but with a creature which has sufficien

frame and bone, or room enough to work upon, you are rewarded with ample weight of the most valuable flesh, as well as with a sufficient quan- tity of sauce to it, in the shape of fat.‘To what purpose call out about the greater weight of bone and offal, if those be amply compensated by the su- perior quantity: of flesh, more wholesome, more pa- latabie, less subject to waste, and worth more per pound than fat>And what if these advantages are not to be obtained{as they surely are not). inde- pendently: of sufficient size of bone, and capacious- ness of frame? The circumstance of waiting longer for the return, only simply amounts to this, we must ever pay the price of a good thing, our only con- cern being, that the goodness of the commodity, and the price, hold due proportion.

But the circumstance most in favour of feeding large stock, has not yet been noted, which is, that the rule is by no means general, or to be depended upon, that small.animals require a sustenance pro-

portionally

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