(82.) _Abuses in Feeding._--The custom of over-feeding was carried to an absurd extent on the promulgation of Bakewell's method, nothing less being aspired to than the glory of laying seven or eight inches of fat on the ribs of sheep. This folly however had its day: the ridiculous parts of the system have to a great extent disappeared, while attention to the production of an increased quantity of mutton, without too great an abundance of fat, has remained to prove to the world the value of the benefits which the English farmer conferred upon his country. Overgrown sheep are indeed good for nothing "save" in the words of Meg Dods, "to obtain premiums at cattle shows, and deluge dripping-pans with liquid fat;" and in this every one will agree, excepting always boarding-school cooks, and others who depend for their principal perquisites on the over-roasting of oily meat! The fat, though not reckoned as offal in the slaughter-house, will speedily show itself as such in the kitchen, by the waste during the cooking process, even in England where fat meat is so much admired; and it is surely absurd to pay the price of good mutton for tallow, when if the latter were really wanted, it could be procured at a cheaper rate by itself, than when forming part of a dear commodity. The only way in which over-fat meat can at all be reckoned profitable, is in its application to the wants of the working classes, whose bodily labour enables them to enjoy what would to others prove displeasing in the extreme, and to digest and assimilate with ease, food which to the sons of sloth would prove a poison. So far as these wants have been supplied, the attempt of Bakewell has been attended with the happiest results, as he and his disciples have placed by their well-spent exertions much good food within the reach of the poorer classes, which they must otherwise have gone without; while in many instances it has driven bacon from the market, being a cheaper and more palatable commodity, which cannot but contribute to the health of the people, seeing the continued use of salted meat is calculated to injure the body, and render it liable to many diseases. Marshall remarks, that fat, like charity, covers a multitude of faults: and he is right, for an ill-shaped animal if well fed, has all its angles speedily effaced, and if its ugliness has not amounted to absolute deformity, it acquires that rotundity of contour so pleasing to the eye, and so apt to mislead us.