of the alimentation of the different counties in Great Britain and of different nations, together with the average amount of work the consumers were capable of, the instruction this Department would afford to social science would be incalculable. For instance, the labourers in the north of England and in Scotland are capable of much harder work than those of the southern counties, and this is very justly attributed to the superior flesh-producing powers of oatmeal used by the former over that of the watery potato, which forms the chief food of the peasantry of Somersetshire and Dorsetshire. If it could be made clear to the farmer that it is to his interest to feed his labourers well, we should doubtless see a change for the better. He will give any price for manures to invigorate his land because he knows his returns will be more than commensurate. Prove to him that by affording Hodge wages that would insure him a more highly nitrogenized food, and that, in consequence, he would be able to load two dung-carts where before he only loaded one, and the problem of elevating the labourers of the country would be speedily solved. It is asserted that an adult labouring man wastes 5oz. of muscle in the course of his daily labour. Some men -such as navvies-waste much more than this; but taking this as the average, we find a very interesting table given in this part of the Exhibition, which affords a good idea to the public of the relative value and cost of various kinds of diet necessary for restoring this amount of waste :

The reader will not fail to observe how wide this scale ranges both as to cost and as to the bulk of the food required to be taken to supply the normal waste of man. Whilst 1lb. 5oz. of either peas or beans are sufficient for this purpose, no less than 20lb. of the watery potato are

necessary to produce the same result. It is clear that the apparatus required to eliminate the muscle-producing elements from such a heap of potatoes must be stretched to more than its usual size,—and we find the fact to be so; for whilst the Irish peasantry depended almost entirely upon this food, their stomachs were so unnaturally large as to render them the most pot-bellied nation in Europe. If we were asked what meal supplies in the smallest compass the two great sustainers of life, carbonaceous and nitrogenous food, we should point to the labourer's bonne-bouche, a dish of bacon and beans; thus we see that the instincts of man lead him to the very same results as the most careful chemical experiments do the philosopher in his laboratory. We may, as a generale rule, depend upon our tastes as a faithful guide to our alimentary requirements. It is not a rule of life, as some sour dietetic Solons would have it, that "whatever is nice is wrong;" and when the child clamours for lumps of sugar, be sure that it is wiser in its generation than you, good mother, for denying it; for sugar supplies, in the most digestible form, the heat-producing food so necessary for its preservation. But it may be asked why, when we wish to show the amount of food necessary to supply the daily waste of the organic matter in the body, we refer to vegetable products. The chief reason is, that meat to the poor man is a luxury rather than a customary article of diet; and another, that all the elements of animal food are to be found in the vegetable world. To use Professor Playfair's words: "The nutritive or flesh-forming parts of food are called fibrine, albumen, and casein: they contain the four elements, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, in exactly the same proportions, and are found both in vegetable and animal food. Fibrine may be got either by stirring freshdrawn blood, or from the juice of a cauliflower; albumen, or white of egg, from eggs, from cabbage-juice, or from flour; casein, or cheese, exists more abundantly in peas and beans than it does in milk itself. . . . . Vegetables are the true makers of flesh; animals only arrange the flesh which they find ready formed in animals." If we go further down in the chain, we find all food in the débris of the rocks, for the breaking up of these form the earth, from which it is eliminated by the chemistry of plants, to be further sorted for man's use in the bodies of animals. We thus see how significant and literally true is the term we apply to the earth of "our great Mother."

The Directors of this Department, having analyzed nearly every article of food which ministers to the wants of man, sum up by reducing man himself to his elements. The spectator at the end of the long gallery is suddenly brought up by a large glass case, thus ticketed: "Ultimate elements in a human body weighing 154lb." Everybody is curious to look at his own contents, and consequently the glass case is generally crowded; and we fancy many an old-fashioned person is inclined to doubt that his corpus can be converted into such a "doctor's shop" as he here sees solemnly ranged in bottles of all sizes. Can it be possible that the tank, containing sufficient water for a good-sized vivarium, represents the amount of that element in an average man perfectly free from the dropsy? When we are told that a human being of the mean size contains 111lb. of pure liquid fluid, we can understand why there are so many thirsty souls in the world. Then we see his fat in a bottle, looking like so much bear's grease, and find there is 15lb. weight of it. His 15lb. of gelatine looks painfully like the glue of commerce. Still more monstrous does it seem to think that his too solid flesh is reducible into the phosphates of lime, carbonates of lime, and the various sulphates of iron, magnesium, potassium, sodium, silicum, and fluorine which we see paraded before us with such hard, dry, chemical cruelty. But what are those large white blocks meant to represent? These are the measures of our gases. Thus we are told that a block one foot square represents the amount of oxygen in our economy, but that our hydrogen would occupy 3000 such blocks! Good gracious! enough to build a pyramid, to say nothing of the chlorine and nitrogen! We enter this department with feelings of curiosity, but leave it with wonder, and a sense of the reductio ad absurdum to which our chemists have reduced imperial man himself.

OH, THE ROAST BEEF OF OLD

ENGLAND!*

THE steadfast character of the Englishman is, no doubt, an important element in our national greatness. We are slow to enter on new ways, and equally slow to desert them when once entered. The character of immobility has, however, its serious drawbacks; if a slow-moving man once goes deliberately wrong he rights himself in as sluggish and deliberate a manner. This is just the case with John Bull in his character as a stock-feeder and breeder. Some years

since (we scarcely like to say how many, for our memory of adipose exhibitions on Christmas-eves goes back a long time), the custom came in of bloating out oxen and sheep with oil-cake until they became mountains of fat, the delight of Baker Street, and the ultimate triumph of butchers. Every year saw the evil increase. Hodge with one hand poured in more oil-cake and with the other pointed to the triumphant result,-shapeless, blear-eyed, panting, miserable beasts, reduced by art to the condition of a huge heap of oil-globules. In vain the Press, with the Times at its head, protested that the true end and aim of the grower of British beef did not consist in converting rump and sirloin into kitchen candles; in vain they pointed to panting pigs and fat-legged oxen as a most melancholy and impotent conclusion to all his labours. In vain the public voice has condemned the system of giving prizes to pigs because they cannot see for fat, and premiums to oxen because their backs

* This article was written in the year 1858, but, as far as we can see, our fat beasts are as rampant as ever.

are flat as tables with adipose stuffing. The Fat Cattle Exhibition still flourishes, and John Bull pours his oil-cake and other carbonaceous food into his stock, with the same regularity as Betty pours Colza oil into the moderatorlamp.

We cannot, however, help attributing this persistence in a bad direction as much to the ignorance of the public as to that of the feeder and breeder. The idea is universally prevalent that the nutritious character of the lean is in a direct ratio to the quantity of the fat. Your streaky sirloin

is always looked upon as a "picture;" and no doubt the presence of fat in moderate quantities is a guarantee that the animal has lived a peaceful, enjoyable life, and has been well supplied with the good things thereof.

If the public and the meat-grower would only stop at this point, all would be well; but they seem to consider that they cannot have too much of a good thing, and accordingly prize oxen, pigs, and sheep grow bigger and bigger as Christmas-tide comes round; the kitchen grease-pot flourishes, and the public will not be convinced. Mr. F. J. Gant, the assistant-surgeon to the Royal Free Hospital, instead of expressing a mere opinion and many vague generalities, determined some time since to notice the condition of a few of the best prize beasts, and then to follow them up to the slaughter-house, and extract the truth out of them by means of a post-mortem inquiry. The result of Mr. Gant's highly interesting labours appeared in several of the town papers, among which may be mentioned the Morning Post and the Observer. He painted what he saw with a picturesque pen worthy of a more noble theme. In looking about him at one of the late Baker Street Exhibitions, he says he could detect no external sign of disease, except in two Devon cows, Class 4, Nos. 32 and 33 prize, each of which was suffering from a disorder of an internal organ:-“One of them looked very ill, and laid her head and neck flat on the ground like a greyhound. I pointed out these animals to a man who was drawing water, and I asked him if their condition was one of common occurrence. He said, 'I know nothing of them beasties in p'ticular, but it's the case with many on 'em: I knows that.'”

Having thus accurately noticed the decrepitude of the beast with a scientific eye, and ascertained from the helper that it was illustrative of the class, he passed on to the pigs,