The morning star and Catholic messenger. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1868-1881, 1868-03-15
INCREASING USE OF MurroK.-we find in

! late number of the Nep Esglasd Howe
stead the following, concerning the use of
| mutton now rs compared with it's use in
former years:
In our boyhood, mutton was an unpopular
meat, and avoided by the city and country
as much a. the meat of the most offensive
animal. To-day, in all the large cities of
the country and among the people east Of
the Mississippi, the best of mutton and lamb
commands the highest price of any meat.
All nations, as they advance in civilization,
abandon the grOsser and semi-barbarous
kinds of food, and substitute for it the luxu-
ries of the garden and nutritious mutton for
the grosser pork, which is far more expen-
sive to produce. The consumption of mutton
by q people has been said to be an index of
their civilization and refinement.
There are some curious facts illustrative
of the immensly increased demand for mutt
ton. Within our recollection, tens of thou
sands of sheep have been slaughtered for
their hides and tallow, and their meat
pressed for swine feed. To-day, take the
year round, butchers complain that it takes
more time to obtain a meagre supply of
mutton and lamb than all other meats. At
Brighton, on the day before Christmas, 1889,
two men held all the sheep (only four hun
dred III ali at Brightou,} yet this monopoly
did not raise the sluggish market one half
cent per pound. In 1859 there was in this
market, the day before Christmas, five thou
sand four hundred sheep all sold, while the
average weekly supply in 1866 was over
eight hundred, and on some market days
over sixteen thousand, and not much heard
of cheap mutton. Another fact is worthy Of
notice, that while common fine wooded sheep
sold for from 81 so to 81 50, the large, long
wooded sheep sold for $II. The fact points
the direction which our farmers should take
in sheep husbandry in order to- meet the
80, 90 81
day. The feeces and the lambs of the long
wooded Leicester sheep are larger than those
of the e-wooled sheep, their mutton bet
ter, and all command higher prices. These
sheep, first quality, sold in 1866 for $40 to
$I6.
PARROTS There is no more striking
piece of irony in nature than the perfect
happiness and equanimity of a parrot living,
in a cage of perhaps eight times its own size
thoroughly active and useless life, which
extends usually beyond the limit-often it
is said, to double the limit-of human life,
and the mainspring of whose happiness ap-
pears to be the mastery which it has attained
of the husks of thought, together with
the knack of never caring to get inside them.
dred-it is said sometimes even hundred
and ffty-years, or more, the creature be-
gins afresh its little stock of words and
phrases; sings n few notes in imitation of
the thrush or the blackbird and breaks off
at the first bar; barks like all the neighbor-
ing dogs in succession, and news like the
cats; climbs about its cage repeating its ac-
quired phrases in all the conceivable varie-
ties of tone and voice-phrases which
usually turn on the name of "Polfy" as a
sort of a permanent axis of egoistic inter
for it's meals, or sometimes
even from q sheer tyrannical sense of the
annoyance which that most discordant of
a
with lady like gentility, now and then, as
if it were tittering behind its hand, or swears
like the cOarsest of troopers ifthe occasion
seem more specially inopportune; employs
itself in unlOosing the tins in which its seed
is kept; and dashing the said seed ruthlessly
on the floor; opens its door onceor twice in
the day, and uses its liberty only to climb
about outside it's cage as it had previously
climbed about inside it; sleeps and wakes up
from sleep to talk to itselfin softer and more
romantic tones, as if it had been at least
dreaming of q meaning to its words; and SO
Of depressed spirit, babb1es away while gen.
Grafton after generation of mortal trouble
passes under its keen, unrefiectiye notice,
OUTLYING man by mere virtue Of the
superior equanimity and economy of ner-
vOus power which it owes to its preference
for words over meanings, and for the exter
nally initiating to the recollecting and re-
combining side of memory.
There seems to lis something truly strik-
ing and even pathetic in the instinct, or
whatever it be; which fascinatcs these and
other talking birds SO profoundly with that
great instrument of progress, articulate
speech, leading them to spend the greater
part of their lives and energies in toying
with it, without ever getting at its real use.
The apparent power of the ant, the bee, and
the beaver to organize and house and feed
communities with more than human success
is, of course, explained as the result of the
natural advantage which every such econo-
my Of instinct adds. But the strange adum-
bration of strictly human faculties in differ
ent tribes of the lower animals must be due
we believe, to some higher purpose as well.
This physical capacity and instructive en-
joyment of certain birds in initiative speech,
whether it he n niysical sadyantaue 70 t],s,