the drover takes his perquisite by cutting off
the hair of their tails. There were a great
many other forms to be observed while the
cattle plague was rife, which we omit. Paying
is the next step, and that is conducted on
principles of honour which those who only believe in
long, complicated, legal agreements, can scarcely
understand. The purchaser goes to the salesman-
banker (all the cattle bankers have their offices
under the clock-tower at the metropolitan cattle
market); pays so much money for so many beasts,
and returning, in ordinary cases, for his herd,
receives delivery of his purchases without a scrap
of writing passing; only exceptionally is an
inquiry made to the banker whether the butcher
has paid. In the course of the year, when, as
before stated, eighteen millions sterling change
hands, a case of fraud is almost unknown—a fact
that speaks well for the general honesty of the
London butchers.

From the cattle department our butcher turns
to sheep, and makes his selection on the same
principles. For the customers who understand
and pay for quality, he purchases Downs, or
the best half-breds— Shropshire Downs and
Oxford Downs of great size are to be met with
at times almost equal to the best pure Sussex.
Then for quantity he takes some longwools,
Leicesters, Lincolns, Cotswolds—good Dutch
sheep which, in effect, are Holsteiners, with a
strong English longwool cross. Butchers with
a large ready-money trade amongst the labouring
classes, like a big sheep—the wife likes a
large shoulder of mutton. If the neighbourhood
is very poor, he may buy some German
Merinos; he can sell them at twopence or
threepence a pound cheaper than better
animals, and, though dear at the money in the
abstract, they afford meat meals to those who
otherwise would go without any meat at all.
For his best customers, the butcher snaps up,
if he has the chance, any three-year-old wethers
that may have been fed for fancy in some
gentleman's domain. As a rule, farmers do not
feed English sheep beyond fourteen months,
but they are well fed, and mutton is, on the
average, better than what our grandfathers
ate.

The day's supply selected—for we won't
enter into the mysteries of the calf market, and
pigs belong to the pork butcher— the drover
next appears upon the scene. He is a stout
fellow, not very neat in his person, nor nice
in his language, with a public character for
brutality. But when it is so (and there are
remarkable exceptions), society is more to be
blamed than the drover. Until very lately,
the drover has had to get his living in all
weathers, at most uncomfortable hours, by
conducting from place to place animals whose
vagaries would often upset the temper of an
educated and fresh, much more of an
uneducated and weary man, with many enemies
and no friends amongst the class who employ
him.

As every bruise on a beast or sheep is a
serious drawback to its selling value, drovers
who injure the stock entrusted to them soon
lose their best customers. Something has been
done by the badge system, by summonses and
fines to discourage drovers' brutality; but more
good seems likely to be brought about by a
recently formed Metropolitan Drovers' Benefit
Society, which, founded by a few sensible and
benevolent salesmen, aims at raising the self-respect
of a class who, in their way, are as indispensable
as postmen or engine-drivers. The object of
the promoters has been, besides establishing
a relief fund to provide a weekly allowance for
drovers in case of sickness, to encourage
frugality, and to discourage cruelty and coarse
language. With this view a club-house has
been opened—where tea, coffee, and soup may
be had, as well as books and newspapers—
outside the market. It is to be regretted that
the publican interest in the Common Council
has hitherto been strong enough to prevent
the drovers' club-house from obtaining a roof in
one of the empty useless buildings within the
cattle market.

The next step is to slaughter the stock
purchased; and this brings us to the disputed
question of public or private slaughter-houses.

A public slaughter-house is an indispensable
adjunct of every great cattle market; but a
private slaughter-house near the butcher's shop,
if properly built, well drained, and well supplied
with a force of water, is a much more
economical arrangement for the butcher, and
consequently for his customers. There have been
private slaughter-houses which were abominable
nuisances, wanting in all the materials for
cleanliness; but at the present time, when there
is a demand for every kind of offal of beast,
sheep, or calf, there is no reason why a slaughter-
house, with proper construction and management,
should be more a nuisance than a stable.
With a private slaughter-house a butcher does
not kill until the moment that suits him—a
matter of importance in hot summers, and close
autumn nights; he is also safe from the pilfering
of loose fat that goes on when a number of
strange men are collected together. The eatable
offal is neatly taken out, and conveyed to his
shop in a clean fresh state, and the carcases,
having been first properly and slowly cooled
down, do not suffer in transit from a distance.
To sell meat to the best advantage, it is
absolutely essential that the butcher should make
the most of the loose fat, the heart, the lights,
the liver, the stomach, the intestines, and the
blood. The offal of a bullock is worth from two
pounds to fifty shillings; of a sheep, from fourteen
shillings to a pound. Half of each of these
sums is likely to be lost in the rough work of a
public slaughter-house. At a slaughter-house,
besides the pilferage of fat, the butcher is obliged
to sell the eatable offal, which is often thrown on
a dirty heap, to a wholesale contractor, while at
home he would retail it at a retail price, and,
consequently, be able to make a proportionate reduction
on all the other parts of the same animal.
A butcher doing a large trade in a poor
neighbourhood puts down his loss on the offal of sixty