Meditating in that way I could venture to
look oxen in the face at the Great Smithfield
Cattle Show, in Baker Street, London. There
were a good many there to be encountered.
There was a sort of gauntlet to be run
between double rows of Devons, Herefords, and
short-horns; but they had no reason to be
vicious, and they were not. There were
files of Devons—beautiful animals—all alike
in colour, and of one colour throughout
—tawny all over; of Herefords also all
alike, but not of one colour throughout,
all having tawny bodies and white faces;
of fat short-horns, ready to mount any
colour, showing little uniformity in that
respect; and finally of the Scotch mountain
cattle, each of the one dark colour proper
to his clan; these last all full of animation,
spirit and intelligence, carrying their flesh
like chiefs, as they are, the aristocracy of
beef. There were a few long-horns at the
end of a file, and some Welsh; but the
classes before named constitute by far the
most important of the many kinds of
manufactured beef.

The main division of our domestic cattle is
into the pure races of the cross breeds. Cattle
of a pure race maintain for centuries the same
general form and colour, and they are
generally of one uniform hue. In Caffraria they
are all black. The ancient British wild
cattle were of a dingy white, with tawny
ears; and some of their race still may be
seen in parks at Chillingham, Lyme and
elsewhere. Cattle of the Ukraine breed have
tawny bodies, white faces, and upward horns.
They are of the same pure race that we call
at home the Herefords. The bull that bore
Europa over sea from Crete, as described by
Bion, was a Hereford bull. It is our way to
ascribe to Hereford a race as old as literature,
whose white faces and tawny bodies were as
well known to ancient Greeks and Romans
as they are to us. The cattle counted by us
as belonging to an old Devonshire family,
and called the Devons—tawny all over, and
somewhat more beautiful as to form than
the Herefords—constitute another pure race.
These two races are to be respected greatly
by all lovers of good beef. They are not the
most profitable dairy cattle; but they yield
a high class beef. They yielded, it must be
confessed, much of the Roast Beef of Old
England; but they were in those days less
tenderly bred, and they were, as before said,
chiefly the old cows that sustained the nation.
Now, by care and cultivation they have been
developed into beef worth singing over. There
is a deep cut of lean meat well covered with
fat over their whole top and sides, and they
yield famous steaks, for whenever they fail of
symmetry the falling off is in the fore quarters,
not where the choicest of their meat is
situated. Cattle of this kind should be bred
chiefly with a view to the beef market, and
will command a good price always in towns
where men abide who have become sensible
of the difference between good meat and
better.

There is yet a best beef, which it is the lot
only of some of us to eat. It is supplied by
west-end butchers to customers who can
afford to pay a penny or twopence a pound
more than their neighbours. This meat is
yielded by the Scots cattle, Highlanders or
Galloways, a dashing set of oxen, quarter-wild,
that are brought down to Falkirk,
bought for stall-feeding, and after undergoing
in Norfolk a few months of creature comfort,
come to Smithfield with the best beef in the
world upon their bones.

For a great proportion of the good roast
beef that we shall eat this Christmas, we
are under obligation to a new breed called
the improved short-horns. This has been
called into existence by the dexterous
combination of different races into a cross, that
should unite in itself the leading qualities of
each. The breed of improved short-horns
does not quite do that, and it is liable, like all
cross breeds, to degenerate in course of time,
if great care be not taken. Of these animals,
the young are also liable to more mishaps than
belong to the calves of a pure breed; they
differ also very much from one another in
appearance, having various, and often
parti-coloured skins. They prove, however, a stock
of great value to the country. They give us
admirable milch cows, and supply much of
the milk that is consumed among us; they are
also more ready to grow fat than any other
kind of cattle. They have slack loins, and
are defective where their meat ought to be
best; but, for a given outlay in food and
time, they yield more beef than animals of
any one of the established races. They are
the chief contributors to Christmas cheer.
In manufacturing districts—particularly at
Birmingham—there is a large class of working ,
people, with good appetites, who are more
concerned to get plenty of good beef, than to
be nice about the comparative delicacy of
beef flavours. These consumers eat the
well-conditioned cows that have done duty in the
dairy districts. Short-horned oxen, bred for
market, meet the wants of customers whose
palates are more curious. Irish and foreign
cattle help to fill up any deficiency; for
though the manufacture of beef in this
country has kept pace, to a remarkable
degree, with the increasing demand for
dinners, yet the demand is still greater than the
home supply. So far then, it is made evident
that there are sundry kinds and qualities of
beef, and that each producer, if he be wise,
will manufacture only that kind of meat in
which it is most probable that he can
establish a successful trade. It is with farmers
as with the butchers: which they shall sell
depends upon the kind of custom they
expect.

Over each beast in the Christmas Cattle
Show there are inscribed the articles on
which it has been fed. I shall not enter here