Tue occurrence of rinderpest in an unmistakeable form in the neighbourhood of Shanghai, has not failed to draw public attention to the extremely defective arrangements for the supply of meat to the Settlements. The Council, at the meeting next Monday, propose to seek for increased powers for the inspection and destruction of -unsound meat, but this measure, though a step in advance, scarcely covers the whole ground. In point -of fact, so long as -no supervision exists over the places where cattle are slaughtered, but little good, comparatively, can be effect ed. It is nearly enough to say that the slaughterhouses are Chinese, to draw a picture of whattheyreally are. Sometime ago wecalledattention to the condition of the places to which our linen goes to be cleansed, but if a native laundry be bad, a native slaughterhouse is something difficult to conceive. Scattered about where a few shanties could be hired cheapest, with no drainage and no provision for-ventilation; many of the predisposing causes of disease exist even for healthy cattle. That cattle brought there and kept there for days should be particularly liable to infection, is what we might have expected, and what the evidence brought forward lately goes to prove. Not alone is the filthy natare.the place dangerous. to the living animal, but more or less the meat cut up: in these localities must be affected. The rapid decay of fresh meat, even when the thermometer marks no extraordinary degree of heat, is most noticeable and few things appear to be more certain than that the presence of already putrescent matter tends to set more rapid decay in fresh organisms exposed to its influence. Asa matter of police, the present system, independent tion. If he find the visits of the Mar.
It is amusing to read of the first-class at ket Inspector too pressing, he has only to move his establishment to some other, perhaps filthier, den, and thence, so long as he continues to elude the vigilance of the"Inspector, he may continue to introduce poison and disease into. the community. He kills his cattle when and how he likes; he has the choice of ways of entry into the settlement at all hours of the day and night. Under the present system, a meat inspector at every avenue would be required. The isolated position of the slaughterhouses renders it an easy thing to smuggle in cattle in the last stage of disease, and it must be remembered that the stricter the inspection, the more profitable its evasion becomes. It is not the first time that the question of a public abattoir has been mooted, but its necessity has never so strongly forced itself on men's minds. The Council have, we believe, years ago had plans and estimates made for sucha work. The present is certainly not a bad time to bring them forward.. There is.a great deal of such work to be'pulled up in matters Municipal; bunding, water works and roads are all urgent, the more so that they have been too long delayed. A public abattoir, could the two Councils be got to agree, seems no less a necessity. composed of nously two hented ea fifty Finally comes the hi st class; it li tall well set-up lads, with good manners and grave aspect. These are the rhetor, cians, sons of rich Mandarin families Belonging to the Faubourg St. Germain Shanghai, and who pay nobly."
Our readers may be amused with a description of the party who started for Pekin. This is the Marquis's picture of his companions "We are I think in luck; for we do not attempt the journey to the great Capital alone, and at haphazard, but with agreeable companions, with whom we have already made friends. Since Hongkong, indeed. we have been very intimate with the most cordial, amusing and well instructed tra: veller that we have ever yet come across, Mr. James Porter, Commissioner of the Chinese Imperial Customs, He promises to act as our guide, to show ur all the curiosities, to talk Chinese for us and, if needed, 8 i ty, in whose service he is a high function-'Then, in Shanghai, we have the Chaplain on'board the Peldrus, an English gunboat, whom we have added to our party, not to in the desert of Mongolia, but to photograph the views which we think most striking."
Phe smallness of the commerce carried on by France with China seems to excite the Marquis as much as it has recently irritated Mons. Giquel. "A few Paris tuftes," he says, some theatrical photographs," vermouth and some common toys make no long list, it must be confessed, for " who, seven years ago, sent an army to Plant her standard on the walls of Pekin. In iis %; 1861 there were ten French houses'
Most of the residents in Shanghai know more about China than the author of this book, and yet, paradoxical as it may pear, we may all derive much amuseme and some instruction from reading it. The writer is a quick-sighted lively young man, who had ample opportunities of seeing foreign countries with the advantages which position and wealth secure, and he certainly has not gone from Dan to Beersheba and found all barren. Still, there is a painful conviction on the reader's mind that the book would have been more interesting if published directly after it was written. Domestic troubles and national calamities have interfered to delay its issue, and the author is obliged to ask forgiveness of his readers if his statistics are no longer those of to-day but of yesterday, and if his impressions written day by day in 1867 Jiave lost some of their freshness in 1872. i This is the Marquis's description of' his first sight of Shanghai. It is fair to say that no one but a Frenchman could. have written the passage "Tt was with pleasure, mixed with surprise, that I saw standing on the with his cap over one ear and his cane in his hand, a worthy French Custom-house officer, with a dark green tunic and all the fussy appearance of a Custom-house inspector, as martial looking and authoritative as in -his native country. You should see how he exacts obedience, greatly by his looks, Lut more by his stick, from the swarming crowd of CI fishwoman, who make fast their dirty boats contrary Shanghai; there are now only three, and they have only exported the stall quantity of two thousand hundred bales of silk. Our glorious war in China seems to have brought many foreigners into the country but no Frenchmen. When shall we lea behind us, then, this exasperating inf priority, and assume in open day the position which we ought to occupy This is the writing of a very enthusiastic but of a very young In fact the country Parson's charming essay ' Con-corning Veal" would receive a number of very happy illustrations from the pages. Take the following for example: For my part I was full of other feelings; I am at the very foot of the Great Wall, and thus; I greet the morning of my twenty-first birthday, Yesterday's accident, the stony road, a difficult but exciting ascent before me, all seem to say to me,' itis the picture of life; excelsior We do-not trouble ourselves with the author's reflections on the state of China politics, the influential position of the Imperial Customs Service, é&c., 0.' Of these matters the young traveller was really quite unfit to form an opinion, He heard the gossip of the C: and repeated it in rather high flown language. The remarks of so casual an observer have 10 political value.whatever; indeed the writer is a flaneur x all, He has good health and high spirits and some vanity; but the publication of books like the one before us does little practical good.. The' picture which the writer unconsciously gives of himself is far more valuable than the pic-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.