Beef is generally accepted as the most nutritious of butchers' meats, and certainly it has the greatest proportion of nutritious substances; it is, however, rather less digestible than mutton, and therefore the latter is more suitable for persons of weak digestion and for invalids.

There have been a few rare instances where mutton was not tolerated at all, and in one instance on record evidently acted as a poison.

Pork is much less digestible, apparently from the close nature of its fibres, and also from the amount of fat that is with it.

Veal and lamb being young foods, are much less digestible than beef or mutton.

The bones of animals are very useful: they contain a large quantity of nutritious substance; gelatine may be prepared from them, and by boiling they make excellent soup.

The viscera of animals are often eaten, for instance the kidneys, liver, part of the stomach as tripe, and the sweetbread. This is more or less a matter of taste, as, on the whole, these are not so good for general consumption as the muscular parts of animals, and they are more liable to contain parasites.

Of game, venison is exceedingly digestible, but it is rather too rich, and is unsuitable on that account for invalids.

The flesh of wild fowl as a general rule is difficult of digestion, and the same may be said of ducks and geese, and in some instances, as in the case of wild duck, it is so difficult of digestion that we are in the habit of taking cayenne pepper with it, in order to stimulate the action of the gastric juice and enable the stomach to digest it.

Pheasants, partridges, and grouse, which are included under red meats, are very digestible. Salmon flesh, however, although nearly as nutritious as mutton or beef, is not quite so digestible.

We will now pass on to the white meats, under which are included ordinary poultry, turkeys, fish, shell-fish, etc. The flesh of the birds yielding white meat is easily digested, and, although very nutritious, the nutriment is not so concentrated as in the case of red meats.

Fish forms a light and digestible food for invalids; but there are some exceptions, for instance the flesh of cod and sturgeon is not very digestible. Fish require to be eaten very fresh, and although the practice of crimping, which is very generally carried out with certain kinds of fish, renders them more digestible and more palatable, it ought not to be done until after the fish have been killed; sometimes they crimp them while they are alive. The flesh of fish contains generally very little fat, but some contain a considerable quantity, and in consequence are less digestible; the liver of the cod contains a great deal, and from this cod-liver oil is obtained.

The flesh of the herring, the eel, and the mackerel, contains fat in the muscular substance, and consequently the flesh of these fishes is rich and difficult of digestion.

The quality of the flesh of fish varies very much, according to the place they come from. You can all understand that fish which have lived in muddy water are not likely to taste as well as those that have lived in clear running streams.

Then among white meats I must mention what are called shell-fish. There are certain crustaceans we use, such as crabs, lobsters, shrimps, etc.; these are an indigestible form of food. Then we pass to molluscs which form an important article of food, especially to certain classes of the community, and the flesh of many of them is very digestible, for instance the oyster, an extremely nutritious food; and in this particular case the flesh is more readily digested when raw than when cooked, as in the latter case it becomes much tougher. Some persons suffer in one way or another after eating the flesh of some of these creatures, especially after eating mussels, which, for some unaccountable reason, take a poisonous character, and certain instances have occurred of serious illness following their consumption.

These are not by any means the only kinds of white meats that are eaten, as there are locusts, and animals higher in the scale not mentioned before because but seldom used, for instance frogs, and among the reptiles turtles and snakes, and almost all these afford extremely digestible forms of food.

There are several processes in use for the preservation of meat. The decomposition of meat occurs in the presence of air and water, and at a certain temperature, and the processes of preservation for the most part depend upon the exclusion of air and of the substances that air contains, or upon lowering the temperature, or upon drying.

Large quantities of meat are preserved by the exclusion of air. The meat we get from Australia is prepared by putting it in a certain quantity of water in tins, and then subjecting it to a temperature above the boiling point of water, and sealing up the contents while the steam is escaping. In this way air is driven out, and the meat can be preserved for a very considerable time.

Meat may be preserved by drying it, and large quantities of fish are preserved in this way.

In Siberia a mammoth was found in ice, with the flesh quite fresh and the skin on it, and it was eaten by-dogs. It had been preserved in the ice of these frozen regions for probably thousands of years.

So it is quite clear that flesh can be preserved for almost any length of time by cooling it sufficiently, and now that this difficulty has been solved we shall get large quantities of meat from America and other countries, and it is to be hoped that we shall in this way gradually reduce the price of butchers' meat.