OCEAN TRANSPORTATION OF CATTLE.
The transportation of cattle across the ocean is said not to be free from painful incidents. It is probable that the cattle on the best lines of steamers get across in fairly comfortable conditions, but here is a record of one winter voyage on a line of steamers going out from Boston. In a storm seven hundred sheep were washed overboard, and seventy-five steers fell and broke their legs and were thrown overboard alive. For three days the storm was so bad that neither food nor water could be given the cattle and sheep, and when they were landed some were too weak to walk, some were lame, all were stiff from standing, in cramped positions, in a wash of icy water for ten or twelve days. One sheep was seen to drop dead when taken from the vessel. Cruelties even worse than these were reported to the editor of this magazine by a young man of undoubted reliability who went across in care of the sheep and who can never forget the suffering he witnessed and was powerless to prevent. Can we call ourselves humane or a Christian people while such treatment of our "fellow mortals" is allowed?—Our Four-footed Friends.