Among other deceits in use among the “knights of the cleaver” is, the doctoring of joints of animals which have died of disease, by the skilful introduction of slips of fat into different parts of the joint, so as to give it the appearance of meat which had been killed in a healthy state. A recent occurrence at Guildhall has proved this practice in all its enormity, and shown that it is carried on to no trifling extent. From the same transaction it came out in evidence that the art is sufficiently extensive to employ a certain part of the “butchering craft” in its distinct mysteries. Probably by “professors of the knife and cleaver” it is considered as the _ne plus ultra_ of butcher-skill, and has its appropriate honours and rewards. But this is known only to the initiated in the “_profession_.” While discoursing of this feat of butcher-ingenuity, it seems not misplaced to observe that the sausages in London are often made out of the carcases of animals that have died. This fact, also, was brought to Mr. Bull’s knowledge, in the course of the evidence in the before-mentioned case. And I can assure my readers, that even when they are not favoured with sausages made of this savoury food, they do not often get meat in sausages better than carrion; and that more than one half of all sausage-meat consists of bone, gristle, and bread, reduced to almost an impalpable powder by means of the machine, and then worked up with a due modicum of water. Nor is this the least part of the evil. From accidental causes and the frauds of the vender, they are often poisonous. Dr. Paris has well observed, in his useful work on diet, that the viscera and intestines of animals, and also their livers, are often poisonous, while the meat of the animal is perfectly wholesome. This proves, as that gentleman well observes, that sausages are not deserving of that general use in which they are held in London: for the integument which encloses the sausage is often highly injurious to health, while the meat possesses no deleterious quality whatever. The poisonous nature of sausages arising from fraud is partly occasioned by the carelessness of the manufacturer in regard of the vessels in which he keeps his meat, but more generally from the quality of the meat which he uses. Some years ago a German chemist discovered, on analysing German sausages, that they contained a portion of prussic acid (the most potent poison known); from the eating of which several persons died. Could the exact cause have been ascertained, it would probably have been found that they were made from the meat of dead animals.