Animal product

“ In economic uses to man mammals are the most important of all animals. They furnish the greater portion of the animal food of many human races, likewise a large amount of their clothing. Horses, asses, oxen, camels, reindeer, elephants, and llamas are beasts of burden and draught; swine, sheep, cattle, and goats furnish flesh, and the two latter milk for food; the wool of sheep, the furs of the carnivores, and the leather of cattle, horses, and others are used for clothing, while the bones and horns of various mammals serve various purposes. ”

“ Zoologists seem sometimes to forget these primitive forms of animal life, and yet how little we know of their life-histories! "How the function of nutrition is accomplished, and the nature and condition of the organic material used as food by these minute animals is not yet determined." ”

“ To render it agreeable to our taste, the production of certain substances had to be reduced, and that of others enlarged, that is to say, nutrition and secretion had to be modified. If the functions in wild animal stocks had remained permanent, we should have had none of those races which are distinguished by a difference in the colour of the hair, in the production of milk, in aptitude for work, or in the production of meat. If instinct itself had not obeyed the action of man, we should not have had in the same kennel, pointers, grey-hounds, truffle dogs and terriers. ”

“ During this great proportion of the day they drop much dung, in which insects nestle; and so supply food for the fish, which would be poorly subsisted but from this contingency. Thus Nature, who is a great economist, converts the recreation of one animal to the support of another! ”

“ The first class of functions comprise the vegetative, or organic life of the animal, and the second class constitute its relative life. Adopting this arrangement, we may say, then, that those animals in which the vegetative life is far more energetic than the relative life are best suited for the purposes of the feeder. In tigers, wolves, and dogs the relative life predominates over the vegetative; the muscles are almost constantly in a high degree of tension, and the processes of nutrition are in constant requisition to supply the waste of muscle. ”

“ What is a country without rabbits and partridges? They are among the most simple and indigenous animal products; ancient and venerable families known to antiquity as to modern times; of the very hue and substance of Nature, nearest allied to leaves and to the ground,—and to one another; ”

“ The food supply of the animal is the largest passive factor in his development; the processes by which he obtains his food supply, the largest active factor in his development. It is these activities, the incessant repetition of the exertions by which he is fed, which most modify his structure and develope his functions. The sheep, the cow, the deer, differ in their adaptation to the weather, their locomotive ability, their means of defence; but they agree in main characteristics, because of their common method of nutrition. ”

“ The Living Animal increases in Size by adding to the Substances which compose its Body, like Substances; these, however, are chiefly derived directly from other Animals or from Plants. The fowl in the farm-yard is incessantly pecking about and swallowing now a grain of corn, and now a fly or a worm. In fact, it is feeding, and, as every one knows, would soon die if not supplied with food. It is also a matter of every day knowledge that it would not be of much use to give a fowl the soil of a cornfield, with plenty of air and water, to eat. ”

“ The animal must consume a certain amount of food merely to keep up its stationary condition, and to supply the materials for waste, respiration, perspiration, and the evacuations. These must first be provided for in all cases, before the farmer can expect any thing for the food.
Frequent observation has shown, that an ox will consume about two per cent, of his weight of hay per day, to maintain his condition. If put to moderate labor, an increase of this quantity to three per cent., will enable him to perform his work, and still maintain his flesh. ”

“ Food may be divided into two classes then—animal food and vegetable food. In animal food we have the meat of wild animals and of domestic animals. In early days, when the number of people was small, the supply of wild animals was large. ”

“ Man, and all domestic animals, may be supported, may even be fattened, upon vegetable food alone: vegetables, therefore, must contain all the substances which are necessary to build up the several parts of animal bodies, and to supply the waste attendant upon the performance of the [Pg 231] necessary functions of animal life. Let us consider what these substances are, and in what quantities they must be supplied to the human body. ”

“ Animal life, on the other hand, exists and fulfills its functions by the expenditure of this force. Animals receive vegetable productions containing these reserves of force into their systems, which systems contain arrangements for liberating the force, and employing it for the purposes it is intended to subserve in the animal economy. ”

“ Those of the Linnæan order, glires, [4] live on grain and fruits; each order of birds, keeps, in the same manner, to one sort of food, animal or vegetable. Fishes, reptiles, and insects, also have each their peculiar and exclusive bill of fare, beyond which even hunger will scarcely force them to wander. But however various each class, and order, and species of animated nature may be in the choice of food, man—all-devouring man, will embrace the whole range of the creation, “scarce a berry or a mushroom can escape him.” ”

“ The great art, however, in the modern science of stock-breeding has been to obtain an animal that shall not only have the utmost beauty of form of which the species is capable, but, at the same time, possess a constitution free from all taint, a frame that shall rapidly attain bulk and stature, and a disposition so kindly that every quantum of food it takes shall speedily, and to the fullest degree, be assimilated and converted into flesh. ”

“ The flesh and the blood of other animals of all kinds, warm or cold, the leaves, twigs, fruits, juices of plants, putrid carcases, hair, feathers, skin, bran, sawdust, the vegetable mould or "humus" of the earth's surface, the sand of the sea, with its minute particles of organic detritus, all serve as food to different kinds of animals. Some are very little fettered in their tastes, and are called "omnivorous," others are bound in the strictest way to a diet consisting of the leaves of some one species of plant or the juices of one species of animal. ”

“ The use of large quantities of animal food, however free from disease germs, has a tendency to develop the animal propensities to a greater or less degree, especially in the young, whose characters are unformed. Among animals we find the carnivorous the most vicious and destructive, while those which subsist upon vegetable foods are by nature gentle and tractable. ”

“ Sufficient has now been said to illustrate the nature of some of the physical processes which accompany organic behaviour in its corporate aspect. The fact that should stand out clearly is that the animal body is stored with large quantities of available energy resident in highly complex and unstable chemical compounds, elaborated by the constituent cells. ”

“ The best results are, perhaps, those which have been incidentally reached in the poultry-yard and on the farm in the breeding of domesticated animals. We have seen that, under these circumstances, certain parts or organs have very markedly diminished in size and efficiency; others have as markedly increased. ”

“ Some years ago, one of our learned and ingenious colleagues at the University of Utrecht, Professor Harting, wrote a charming book on the industry of animals, and demonstrated that almost every trade is known in the animal kingdom. We find among them miners, masons, carpenters, paper manufacturers, weavers, and we may even say lace-makers, all of whom work first for themselves, and afterwards for their progeny. Some dig the earth, construct and support vaults, clear away useless earth, and consolidate their works, like miners ”

“ The study whose aim is to make us acquainted with the kind of food adapted to each animal constitutes an interesting branch of Natural History. The bill of fare of every animal is written beforehand in indelible characters on each specific type ”

“ Wherever intelligence and sound judgment are to be found, it will be impossible long to resist the effects of a comparison between animals, which, on an equal quantity of the same food, with the same attention and in the same time, will return 50, 20, or even 10 per cent. more in their intrinsic value or marketable product, than the ordinary class. This improvement has been, relatively, most conspicuous in the Western and Southern states; not that the present average of excellence in their animals surpasses, or even reaches that of the North and East ”

“ In determining the amount of food and of its several constituents consumed for a given live weight of the animal in a given time, and the amount of food and of its several constituents required to produce a given amount of increase in live weight, several hundred animals, including oxen, sheep, and pigs, were subjected to experiment. In these researches, selected lots of animals were supplied, for weeks or months, with weighed quantities of food of known composition, as determined by analysis, and especially adapted to the particular point under investigation. ”

“ For the purpose of refining the coarse breeds, no animal has ever been so successful as this. They are fine-boned, short, and very compact, with bellies almost touching the ground, light head and ears, fine muzzle, of great docility and quietness, small feeders, and producing much meat for the quantity of food consumed. ”

“ Nor are all Animals produced alike, nor Minerals, or Vegetables; but after many different manners, or ways. Neither are all Productions like their Producers; for, some are so far from resembling their Figurative Society, that they produce another kind, or sort of Composed Figures; as for example, Maggots out of Cheese, other Worms out of Roots, Fruits, and the like: but these sorts of Creatures, Man names Insects; but yet they are Animal Creatures, as well as others.
CHAP. VI. Of Productions in general.
All Creatures are Produced, and Producers ”

“ Animal Food.—The most advantageous animal food for fowls, and on which they make the most rapid and healthy progress, consists in the worms, snails and insects that they obtain naturally when unconfined; I do not think that there is any other kind of food which conduces so much to their healthy condition ”

“ Existing, as these always do, in a liquid form, unless this is carefully guarded against, these palatable and health-giving essences of all animal food, both tame and game, are apt to be wasted and dissipated in various forms, when the exercise of mature judgment and a little care would confine them to these meats in the course of preparation. ”

“ The same is of Milk, Eggs, and the like; out of which, a condition of Life is endeavoured for: and, for proof, such sorts of Creatures account an Animal Life the best; and therefore, all such superfluous Parts of Creatures, endeavour to unite into an Animal Society; as we may perceive, that Fruits and Herbs, are apt to turn into Worms, and Flies; and some Parts of Milk, as Cheese, will turn into Maggots; so that when Animals feed of such Meats, they occasion those Parts they feed on, to a more easie Transformation ”

“ By making pets of wild animals much can be learned of their habits, dispositions, and characteristics. Especially their food habits, which, in the wild state, exert so much influence in the economy of nature as checks to the undue increase of other species of animals, insects, or plants. ”

“ Nevertheless the student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division—that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods, into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two.
The history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard, Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story. ”

“ Feeding habits, economics, and protection of birds.—The feeding habits of birds are not only interesting, but their determination decides the economic relation of birds to man, that is, whether a particular bird species is harmful or beneficial to man. Casual observation shows that birds eat worms, grains, seeds, fruits, insects. A single species often is both fruit-eating and insect-eating. Do fruits or do insects compose the chief food-supply of the species? ”

“ With the lion and the wolf he will eat of fresh slain animals; with the dogs and the vulture he will feed on putrid flesh; [5] [8] with the ox and the guinea-pig he will devour raw vegetables, under the name of salads; with the squirrel and the mouse he will feast on nuts and grain; with birds of prey he feeds on fowl of almost every species; with fishes he feeds on fish; and with insects and reptiles he sometimes lives on insects and reptiles. Nor is he satisfied even with this abundant variety, but must go to the mineral kingdom for salt, as a condiment before he can furnish out his meal. ”

“ Since all the animals obtain their food—either directly, or in the case of the carnivorous indirectly—from the plant kingdom, it follows that we gain nothing, chemically considered, by taking our sustenance at second hand from the animals. ”