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Lyttelton Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1391, 25 April 1865, Page 6

Mr. Banting.—l was very wroth for a considerable time with that fat man—Mr. Banting I think he is called—who has been boring the world for some months back with accounts of his decrease in size, till I bethought me that possibly I might have been doing him a foul wrong, and imputing to selfish motives, and a taste for notoriety, what in reality might turn out to be very high-minded and elevated patriotism. My first impression was—Here is a corpulent old humbug, who has no greater or more enoblihg task in life than to measure his girth round the waist, weigh his fat sides, aud keep a register of his palpitations as he goes upstairs to bed—publishing, too, to the world these experiences, as if they were great boons and blessings to humanity, and proclaiming aloud how and by what subtle devices he contrived to grow thinner; and all this nasty balderdash—nasty it unquestionably is—in a land where misery and destitution abound, and where we read such a heading to a paragraph in our newspapers as "Death by Starvation." Of what stuff must a mau be made who can see his digestional diary printed in the same column that reveals a death from actual want? Of what, besides " fat," must' a creature be compounded, who can go on from day to day recording the effects produced upon his heavy carcass by abstention from saccharine matter and suchlike, when the great monster Misery stares us in the face —that there are people without any food at all—that there are men and women, blue-lipped and gaunt with famine, hollow-eyed and jaw-sunken, crawling about in search of garbage and oflal ? We used to be disgusted at the aldermanic envy of the beggar who declared he had not eaten for twenty-four liours, expressing itself in the outburst, " Oh, if I had your appetite!" but what shall we say to this mass of heaving blubber that only cries out to be decreased, of repletion that implores to be drained, in the very crisis of cotton-famine, of Irish want, and of almost universal destitution ! When the Queen of Prance suggested giving brioche to the starving populace, she was only ignorant, not unfeeling. When a duke of Norfolk proposed curry-powder to the famine-stricken in Ireland, he was simply talking like a very kindhearted but addle-headed old gentleman, who knew nothing of the malady for which he was prescribing. But here is far worse here is a man who, in a day of great pressure and want, when the energy of every thoughtful man is taxed to think by what contrivance the souls, and bodies ©f some hundred thousand people are to be held together, comes forward to tell us not how to support life, not how to keep the spark alight with some cheap substitute for fuel, not how to maintain the faint flicker alive by some newly-found expedient, but how he has contrived to keep down his own redundant heat—to put slack upon the over-exuberant blaze of his own personal hearth. Can indecency and selfishness go further ? Corpulency is unpleasant, so is a tight boot ; but don't expatiate on either to people who are hungry or go barefoot. Your coat may be too tight in the sleeve, but don't talk of it in the society of the halfnaked. And this is precisely what this fat tnan is doing ! Good heavens! The ill of the world is not repletion—it is emptiness; and all the other fat men are running abo Jt in their own pluflEy and breathless manner, asking, What about malt ? How is it as to chocolate ? Are anchovies bad for me ? Must I cut off my stilton ? To these I say, Let me be your doctor, lietrench your all-absorbing self-interest. Turn your thoughts from your duodenum to the famishing creatures who peer down through the railings of your areas at the blazing fire in your kitchen-grace. Give up this filthy selfishness that takes for its worship all that is least worthy in humanity. Walk, ride, bathe, swim, fast if you must, but take your thoughts off this detestable theme ; and try to remember that the subjedt that you want to popularize is in its details one of the Coarsest that can be made matter of conversation.—Blackwood's Magazine. Colonial Breeds of Sheep.—A correspondent of the Australasian remarks as follows upon " overstraining " in breeding sheep " Experience shows that the produce of imported -stock are superior to the sires after acclimatisation—a fact that should ever have the improver's careful consideration, the surest test of their adaptability. The effects of over-straining is to be seen in many of our imported stock, in what is termed the Negretti, with lap and wrinkles (coionially speaking), leather-necked, the purpose and object being to secure a larger covering I of skin upon the merino size of body, the sale of | which has been encouraged by our colonial breeders more because it was new and original. To produce this class of sheep from the merino would take a considerable number of years, but from the over-strained coarser breeds with the merino such will be secured in a much shorter time. The prospect of securing the carcass of our English breeds has had its effect upon continental breeders, the crosses showing them how easy it is to draw new characters typifying the merino. The greater part of the imported sheep of the present time have this mark of over-straining. The whole of our colonial breeds, with few exceptions, have the coarser strain ; experience has always shown, when such meet in breeding for merino wool, the result is a failure, the sheep throwing more upon some particular point, both in character and wool. That the merino character can ever reach the English coarser breeds in size and weight, maintaining the merino texture of the wool, I do not consider likely. On the other hand, under the influence of soil, pasture, and climate, the coarser English Bbeep sink below their original standard, and in doing so, the whole constitutional system of the animals becomes deranged, and through this constitutional weakness is open to all diseases as well as those arising from every other chance by epidemic. Although the coarser breeds fail to maintain their standard, the merinos, on the other hand, can be so far improved above the standard that we receive, that they will reach above the fall of the coarser breed, and what is of still more importance, they secure a greater amount of constitutional energy, imparting to the character of the offspring, "a much truer type of the parentage. The duration of life between the two classes of sheep are as eight to twelve years. I have seen merinos reach the prolonged age of fourteen years, while I have no recollection of the coarser breed reaching much over eight. I have often endeavoured to fix some reason for the cause why the merino, in crossing with the courser bred, cannot secure and exercise upon the offspring a much greater influence than it does, considering the coarser becomes weakened during the progress of acclimatization. Why it should not thoroughly identify itself more completely after years of crossing, has led me to the conclusion that the fact of over-straining the coarser breed for the purpose of mutton, so disorganises the anatomy of the physical construction of the frame, that the wool-growing powers of the purer type cannot incorporate so closely as to produce the soft silky texture of the Merino wool, proving that the mutton- 1

arowing power of the animal so overstrained, Is greater for the purpose for which it was brought into existence. In this, I consider have we ft reason how a new type of the merino can so easily be drawn from the cross of the coarse and fine breeds.