Vegetarian cookery

livion of a sausage-skin, may be full of Trichina spiralis, a little worm, which is doing the business of his relative the grave-worm on living thousands. “Haunch of mutton— Welsh mutton— then ?” we hear the pensive public suggesting. Abjm’e it like the pestilence, is our reply ; foiu per cent, of our sheep perish annually of disease, and eight out of ten of these “casualty muttons” come to market. Will oiu readera still ventm-e on a little bit with currant jelly ? We tell them solemnly that that very haunch was, perhaps, “ polished ” — that is to say, being lean and flabby with foot disease or scab, a healthy sheep may have been killed with this one, and its fat rubbed over and into the rotten carcass to cheat the eye of pm-chasers, and give it the gloss of health. Listen to Mr. Bruce. Four million and a half pounds sterling is the value of the cattle which die yearly mthout the butcher’s knife and poleaxe in England. Disease has spread so terribly among the flocks and herds, that the cattle insurance offices are at a standstill. In 1844, 3 per cent, premium covered their payments, now they have raised the rates to 7 per cent., and are in difficulties, though they refuse Irish cattle altogether. Fleuro-pneumouia is the malady that decimates our fields and stockyards most, and Professor Gamoee estimates that, with this and other ailments, a fifth of all the meat sold is tainted. Of 1,839 dairy cows in Edinburgh during 1862, 791 were sold to 26 INTRODUCTION. butchers, after their milk had been sapping the health of young and old ; in Dublin, out of 31.5 sickened cows, 161 went to the slaughter-house. In London, a far greater number are distri- buted over our households, although Dr. Letheby’s men seize on tons of putrid meat weekly. The graziers or salesmen can get £8 or £10 for a carcass, rotten but presentable, and they will not resist the temptation. It may, perhaps, here be well, briefly to notice a few popular objections, almost invariably presented on a first acquaintance with the Vegetarian system. It is supposed that a diet apart from the flesh and blood of animals is intended as an offensive interference with the prevailing customs of society, and by a few even that it is attempted to denounce the consumption of flesh as food as in some degree sinful. These objections are, however, altogether unfounded ; inasmuch as the advocates of the Vege- tarian system, though they base their arguments upon the principle that man’s natural and best food must be derived, in its leading characteristics at least, from the Vegetable kingdom, and be altogether apart from the flesh of animals, leave un- touched the freedom of individuals to accept or not the practice thus presented for the consideration of the reflective. The true spirit of Vegetarianism is benevolence, and has its mission in informing the understanding and appealing to the moral feelings of the world in relation to man’s external habits, but throws not one reproach at the conscientious followers of the mixed diet system, who see no force in its reasoning, or prefer to maintain their adherence to the more general practice of society.