KILLING NO MURDER.
A YORKSHIRE butcher, who is moreover a Quaker, has given to the world the results of his experiments in slaughtering animals. Actuated by motives of humanity, he has triedpithing, perforating the heart, and intruding a stick into the brain, and up the spinal marrow; and has invariably found the business of death much more speedily effected by a stun on the head from a well-aimed blow with the common flat axe. In the case of an old bull, this humane quaker recommends that the hair be clipped off from the forehead ; and this, in bulls, he considers an essential though a simple way of saving a repetition of strokes. A clever man, he adds, would, with the first stroke, knock down nineteen out of twenty head of cattle, and often the twentieth. "The common mode of sticking sheep and lambs is I think the best; immediately breaking the neck and introducing thefinger to crush the pith, but not the knife to cut it. By this means, the skin or membrane around the pith is not broken, and the crushing acts the same as a stun upon the brain. A not very uncommon cruelty practised upon sheep and lambs,
i particularly in large slaughter houses, s, beginning to flay them before life is extinct. This generally causes them to live twice as long as they otherwise would do. I have seen three legs of a sheep flayed before the animal was dead, and not unfrequently heard an oath from the mouth of the operator at every movement of the animal, because that movement intefered with the next cut of his knife. This cruelty I believe to be very common."
Humanity was certainly never under the regulation of A cooler person than this Quaker. It is very clear that the hand of this experimentalist was never rendered unsteady by the agitation of his feelings. It is also certain that humanity is no affair of tem- perament. The disposition of Mr. Weatherall, the Quaker, is wide as the poles asunder from that of Mr. Martin of Galway: yet Smithfield is the theatre which both choose as the appropriate field for their merciful exertions.
The main object of Mr. Weatherall's composition is, to establish abattoirs—great national butcheries—where the slaughter may be placed under regulation, and all unnecessary infliction of pain avoided. This, in addition to the argument of salubrity, is un- doubtedly worthy of the consideration of the men with whom the improvement of the metropolis rests—if it rests with any body. We are surprised that a connoisseur like Mr. Weatherall makes no mention of the Portuguese method of killing, which has been often recommended—the sticking a short knife into the medulla of the spine close to the brain.
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