remarkably fond of spiders. Great Britain even transcends her continental neighbours. The "braxy" of Scotland is putrid mutton, the sheep having died of the rot; game and venison is seldom relished till it is "high," or, in honest language, till it is a mass of putrefaction, disengaging in abundance one of the most septic poisons the chymist knows of; in numerous cases it is a mass of life and motion, the offspring of putridity. Pigs are still whipped to death; lobsters are boiled alive; cod are crimped; eels are skinned, writhing in agony; hares are hunted to death, and white veal is the greatest luxury. As an act of justice we also publish the following REASONS which have induced a benevolent class of individuals to go to the other extreme, and renounce, entirely, animal food, or any thing that has enjoyed sensitive life. 1. Because, being mortal himself, and holding his life on the same uncertain and precarious tenure as all other sensitive beings, he does not feel himself justified by any supposed superiority, or inequality of condition, in destroying the vital enjoyment of any other mortal, except in the necessary defence of his own life. 2. Because the desire of life is so paramount, and so affectingly cherished in all sensitive beings, that he cannot reconcile it to his feelings to destroy, or become a voluntary party in the destruction of, any living creature, however much in his power, or apparently insignificant. 3. Because he feels an utter and unconquerable repugnance against receiving into his stomach the flesh or juices of deceased animal organization. 4. Because he feels the same abhorrence against devouring flesh in general, that he hears carnivorous persons express against eating human flesh, or the flesh of dogs, cats, horses, or other animals, which in some countries it is not customary for the carnivorous to devour. 5. Because nature appears to have made a superabundant provision for the nourishment of animals in the saccharine matter of roots and fruits; in the farinaceous matter of grain, seed, and pulse; and in the oleaginous matter of the stalks, leaves, and pericarps," of numerous vegetables. 6. Because the destruction of the mechanical organization of vegetables inflicts no sensitive suffering, nor violates any moral feeling; while vegetables serve to render his own health, strength, and spirits, better than those of most carnivorous men. 7. Because, during thirty-four years of rigid abstinence from the flesh and juices of deceased sensitive beings, he finds that he has not suffered a week's serious illness; that his animal strength and vigour have been equal or superior to that of other men; and that his mind has been fully equal to numerous shocks, which it has had to encounter from acts of turpitude in his fellow-men. 8. Because, observing that carnivorous propensities among animals are accompanied by a total want of sympathetic feelings and humane sentiments, as in the hyena, the tyger, the vulture, the eagle, the crocodile, and the shark, he conceives that the practices of those carnivorous brutes afford no worthy example for the imitation or justification of rational, reflecting, and conscientious beings. 9. Because he observes that carnivorous men, unrestrained by reflection or sentiment, even refine on the cruel practices of the most savage animal; and apply their resources of mind and art to prolong the miseries of the victims of their appetite, skinning, roasting, and boiling animals alive, and torturing them without reservation or remorse, if they add thereby to the variety or the delicacy of their carnivorous gluttonies. 10. Because the natural sentiments and sympathies of human beings, in regard to the killing of other animals, are generally so averse from the practice, that few men or women could devour the animals which they might be obliged themselves to kill; yet they forget, or affect to forget, the living endearments or dying sufferings of the creature, while they are wantoning over its remains. 11. Because the human stomach appears to be naturally so averse from receiving the remains of animals, that few could partake of them if they were not disguised and flavoured by culinary preparation; yet rational creatures ought to feel that the prepared substances are not the less what they truly are, and that no disguise of food, in itself loathsome, ought to delude the unsophisticated perceptions of a considerate mind. 12. Because the forty-seven millions of acres in England and Wales would maintain in abundance as many human inhabitants, if they lived wholly on grain, fruits, and vegetables; but they sustain only twelve millions scantily, while animal food is made the basis of human subsistence. 13. Because animals do not present or contain the substance of food in mass, like vegetables; every part of their economy being subservient to their mere existence, and their entire frames being solely composed of blood necessary for life, of bones for strength, of muscles for motion, and of nerves for sensation. 14. Because the practice of killing and devouring animals can be justified by no moral plea, by no physical benefit, nor by any allegation of necessity, in countries where there is abundance of vegetable food, and where the arts of gardening and husbandry are favoured by social protection, and by the genial character of the soil and climate. 15. Because whenever the number and hostility of predatory land animals might so tend to prevent the cultivation of vegetable food as to render it necessary to destroy, and perhaps to eat them, there could in that case exist no necessity for destroying the animated existences of the distinct elements of air and water; and, as in most civilized countries there exist no land animals besides those which are purposely bred for slaughter or luxury, of course the destruction of animals, birds, and fish, in such countries, must be ascribed either to unthinking wantonness or carnivorous gluttony. 16. Because the stomachs of locomotive beings appear to have been provided for the purpose of conveying about, with the moving animal, nutritive substances, analogous in effect to the soil in which are fixed the roots of plants, and consequently nothing ought to be introduced into the stomach for digestion, and for absorption by the lacteals or roots of the animal system, but the natural bases of simple nutrition, as the saccharine, the oleaginous, and the farinaceous matter of the vegetable kingdom. EXTRACT FROM A POEM, ENTITLED HUMANITY, DEDICATED TO MASTER W. E. FORSTER, BRADPOLE, DORSET. Harvey & Darton. Such needless pains as cruel hands On which they burn it, after flaying; Where the poor mangled wretch must share, (Without the martyr's dauntless mind That gives alone the power to bear) The pangs that martyrs find: Such pains as full of torment wait The crab condemn'd to torture slow*; Such as attend the wounded state That the poor crimp-cod's writhings show†; *The crab is set over the fire in cold water, lest it should throw its claws on being plunged into water already heated. + The cod, while alive, is gashed in several places, to make the flesh firm, -called " crimping." THE PLEASURES OF HUMANITY. I cannot meet the lambkin's asking eye, I cannot fling, with lib'ral hand, the grain, Go, and be happy in your mutual loves; Thus should I say, were mine a house and land- And you, O wild inhabitants of air, To bless and to be blest, at PETER'S call, Invited by his kindness, should repair; No school-boy's hand should dare your nests invade, And you, O natives of the flood, should play How far more grateful to the soul, the joy, Than, like the city epicure, to cry, "Zounds! what rare dinners!-Oh! how I could eat ye!" DR. WOLCOTT. FACTS AND SCRAPS. WHITE VEAL. Calves are those unfortunate animals which, in this Christian country, are doomed to "die more painfully, that man may live more luxuriously." We have received different heart-rending statements, respecting the cruelties practised upon them, which commence immediately as they enter the slaughter-house, and terminate only with the last agonized groan. The preparatory bleedings, often repeated twice a-day, are so profuse that the calf falls down on the ground from faintness and exhaustion. Instead of pity or compassion in the breast of a slaughterman, the treatment that ensues is pinching and twisting the tail, and beating or kicking it, to make it rise. The average time, which varies, from the convenience and caprice of the butcher, between the calf leaving the dairy to enter the slaughter-house and the termination of its sufferings, is four days. Some of our Correspondents, who reside near slaughter-houses, state that, day by day, they can recognize the different degrees of exhaustion, from these bleedings, in the altered sound of their moans, becoming more and more faint, till at length they express, unequivocally, the truest anguish. Complaining to the butcher is certain to induce an additional torment,—that of tying up the mouth closely with cord, or securing it by a buckle-strap, to pass round the head, which is usually adopted. When the ultimatum of torture arrives, suspended by the hind-legs, with one hook run through the nostrils and another hook through the tail, to keep the neck in a bent position, to bleed to death, we find, in the bundle of communications lying before us on the subject, that some of the fashionable butchers are not behind our theoretical and experimental surgeons in ingenuity of torture, in their manufacture of white veal. We hear of the process of flaying or skinning being commenced before the calf is dead, to judge whether the flesh be sufficiently white, or whether, by checking the vital stream, it should bleed to death as slowly as possible, drop by drop, to produce a sufficient degree of whiteness. If our Legislature, disregarding the convenience and caprice of butchers, were to enact, that before the termination of that day on which a calf was taken to the slaughter-house, it should be stunned by a blow upon the head,' after,which the throat to be cut-we should then have true reason to congratulate our country on the advancement of humanity. EFFECT OF STEAM-COACHES. We doubt whether our labours to accomplish either of the objects of this publication, if ever so successful, could produce such complete mitigation (rather abolition) of animal suffering as the substitution of locomotive machinery for the inhuman, merciless treatment of horses in our stage-coaches. The man who started the first steam-carriage was the |