Page:Husbandman and Housewife 1820.djvu/133

 observation, Mr. Cline concludes to be decidedly wrong; for in proportion to this unnatural increase of size, they become worse in form, less hardy, and more liable to disease.

Observations by the Editors of the Retrospect of Discoveries.

IN this very excellent communication of Mr. Cline's, which is fraught with valuable information, there is one position which can be only understood in a general sense, namely; that females of the largest size give most milk in proportion: small cows are often known to give more milk than large; the quantity of milk seems to depend on the particular breed, and on the supply of food.

Fatness also does not seem to be inconsistent with every disease of the lungs, though no doubt it is with most, at least if we may argue from the human race to brute animals, as nothing is more common than for fat people to be asthmatic.

The directions for breeding given by Mr. Cline are certainly the best calculated to produce fine healthy animals, and of course the most wholesome meat; but there is some doubt whether this would be agreeable to the breeders, as the exuberant fatness, which has been so fashionable among them for some years past, and which in all probability is inconsistent with the health of the animal: a prodigious fatness is justly considered as a state of disease in mankind, and there is no reason why it should not be so in beasts also: as a confirmation of the opinion that the excess of fat does not improve the quality of the meat, it is pretty generally acknowledged that the average of mutton in the London markets affords a much more coarse and unpalatable food than what was in general to be had some years back, before the prodigiously fat breeds became