The supply of sheep and lambs has, during the last twenty years, stood nearly still; for in 1828 there were brought to market 1,412,032, and in 1849 but 1,417,000, or only an extra 4,000 for the 500,000 mouths which have been added to the metropolis between these two periods. That London has of late years abjured mutton, as our immediate ancestors appear to have done pork, the evidence of our senses denies. How, then, are we to explain this stagnation in the Smithfield returns? By the fact that a new channel has been found in the rapid rise of Newgate market, the great receptacle of country-killed meat brought up to town by the railways. Those who remember the place forty years ago state that there were not then twenty salesmen, and now there are two hundred. This enormous development is due to steam, which bids fair to give Newgate, in the cold season at least, the lead over Smithfield. The new agent has more than quadrupled the area from which London draws its meat. Twenty years ago eighty miles was the farthest distance from which carcases ever came; now the Great Northern and North-Western railways, during the winter months, bring hundreds of tons from as far north as Aberdeen, whilst some are fetched from Hamburgh and Ostend. Country slaughtering will in time, we have little doubt, deliver the capital from the nuisances which grow out of this horrible trade. Aberdeen is in fact becoming little else than a London _abattoir_. The style in which the butchers of that place dress and pack the carcases leaves nothing to be desired, and in the course of the year mountains of beef, mutton, pork, and veal arrive the night after it is slaughtered in perfect condition. According to returns obligingly forwarded to us by the different railway companies, we find that the following was the weight of country-killed meat by the undermentioned lines:-- Tons. Eastern Counties 10,398 North-Western 4,602 Great Western 5,200 Great Northern 13,152[23] South-Eastern 1,035 South-Western 2,000 Brighton and South Coast 100 ------ 36,487