Next comes the farmer's horse, and the load and diet being suitable to him, he can do the punishment and easily satisfy the law. The broken-down hack is never yoked at all, he passes into the hands of the surgeon, and there remains. While the little Shetlander is in clover; he never had so many oats before--has actually as much again as he can consume--and the cart and harness being too large, and the load altogether ridiculous for his strength, he is never put to it, and so escapes the legal punishment. And so it is that one portion of the inhabitants of horsedom, pointing to the Shetlander, cry out that "the convicts have too much food, they are up to the eyes in luxuries;" another portion, pointing to the dray horse, say "the convicts are starved, and are dying of hunger;" whilst a third answers both by pointing to the farm horse and saying that "he can do the work and satisfy the law. Why should they not all be treated alike? a horse is a horse all the world over." Our system of dieting and working convicts is exactly similar to the above; only at the invalid prison where I was confined the law was not adhered to. I knew prisoners who ate double the quantity of food allowed them, and I knew others who did not eat above half. Sometimes it happened that a voracious prisoner could not get his food exchanged so as to increase its bulk, and in that case he would be compelled to seek refuge in hospital. If the diet there was not sufficient, God help him, for from man no further aid was to be expected. I recollect having a conversation with a prisoner who had just arrived with eighteen others from the prison at Chatham. He had got his leg broken accidentally while at work there, and the medical men had not made a very good job of putting the bones together, so that he did not expect ever to be able to use it. I asked him what sort of a place Chatham was under the new system. "Oh, it's the worst station out," he replied, "they are starved and worked to death. They are even eating the candles, and one man died lately who had twenty or thirty wicks in his stomach when the _post mortem_ took place. In the docks I have seen fellows pick up the dirtiest muck you ever saw, and swallow it! There are lots of fellows there who eat all the snails and frogs they can get hold of. I have seen one man several times swallow a live frog as easily as you could bolt an oyster. Frogs and snails are considered delicacies at Chatham." "How did you get on with the food yourself?" "Well, I was never much of an eater, and I could get on middling well with it; but then the food was better there than it is here. This is the worst station out for 'grub.' The cook and steward must be d---- villains to rob a lot of prisoners of their food." "Do they all get eight marks a day at Chatham?"