HORSE BEEF.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 119, 19 May 1870, Page 6

HORSE BEEF.

We are sorry to say (writes the •'Pall Mall Gazette") that the hippophagists are advancing with rapid strides. In 1868, during the months of September, October, and November, 565 horses (including a few asses and mules) were eaten in Paris. In 1869, during the same period, the special slaughter-house disposed of 683 horses, showing an increase in three months alone of 118 horses, or 36,000 feillogramines of horse meat. In the departmets also horse cooking progresses at the same rate. These accounts are most painful to those who for years have been accustomed to sit behind the noble animal without a thought of transferring him to the dinner-table and who feel that if once, called upon to eat horses and donkeys, there in nothing to prevent their being requested some day to swallow dogs and cats. That horse dinner at the Langham Hotel was a great mistake, and shows what serious consequences may ensue from a moment's thoughtlessness ; people can get ' anything down if it is well covered with sauce 3 , and the sauce tastes more strongly than the thing it hides. We all professed to take immense interest in the horse dinner, as we should in any dinner eaten by a crowd of notabilities. If a duke ate a donkey, several people would follow his example ; but the vast majority of us never thought that hippophagy was anything but an amusement for a few people with depraved and eccentric appetites, or that the world in general would be expected to draw upon the stable for the requirements of the kitchen. If, however, as appears to be the case, the French really do mean to live on horseflesh, and the channel between the two countries is to ,be filled up, the next generation will see a more mighty revolution in our habits than railways and telegraphs have yet effected, and not the most pleasant anticipations^^; England, as it will be, is the prospect of Dobbin on the spit.