its flesh, as food, is certain to be produced. In most cases, indeed, as
the flesh of diseased animals has a tendency to very rapid putrefaction,
it becomes not only unwholesome, but absolutely poisonous, on account of
the absorption of the _virus_ of the unsound meat into the systems of
those who partake of it. The external indications of good and bad meat
will be described under its own particular head, but we may here premise
that the layer of all wholesome meat, when freshly killed, adheres
firmly to the bone.

95. ANOTHER CIRCUMSTANCE GREATLY AFFECTING THE QUALITY OF MEAT, is the
animal's treatment _before it is slaughtered_. This influences its value
and wholesomeness in no inconsiderable degree. It will be easy to
understand this, when we reflect on those leading principles by which
the life of an animal is supported and maintained. These are, the
digestion of its food, and the assimilation of that food into its
substance. Nature, in effecting this process, first reduces the food in
the stomach to a state of pulp, under the name of chyme, which passes
into the intestines, and is there divided into two principles, each
distinct from the other. One, a milk-white fluid,--the nutritive
portion,--is absorbed by innumerable vessels which open upon the mucous
membrane, or inner coat of the intestines. These vessels, or absorbents,
discharge the fluid into a common duct, or road, along which it is
conveyed to the large veins in the neighbourhood of the heart. Here it
is mixed with the venous blood (which is black and impure) returning
from every part of the body, and then it supplies the waste which is
occasioned in the circulating stream by the arterial (or pure) blood
having furnished matter for the substance of the animal. The blood of
the animal having completed its course through all parts, and having had
its waste recruited by the digested food, is now received into the
heart, and by the action of that organ it is urged through the lungs,