I have looked over the figures submitted for my special delectation. Figures can be made to show anything, and it is surprising with what facility some men can chuck them together in support of their own hypotheses. During a long commercial expsriene; I have ever found such figures when put to a practical issue come out very much on the wrong side of the ledger. I have compared Mr Dorn well's figures with the practical results obtained in various colonies where public abattoirs have been established, and tho only conclusion I can arrive at is that Mr Dornwell's figures are on a par with the American puff cards that were detained by tha customs for duty as works of art, but on examination by experts were pronounced to be of no commercial value. The annual re quirements of what Mr Dornwell calls this "" one-horse city " and suburbs he estimates at 13,000 cattle and 142,000 sheep and pigs. He then tots up the figures, leaving a balance in favour of abattoirs of £5968. At the Glebe Island abattoirs, New South Wales, the average weekly slaughtering is given as 1500 large cattle and 20,000 small cattle, which represents annually 78,000 large and 1,040,000 small. Yet they are satisfied with a net annual profit of about £3000. There is evidently a splendid opening here for figures. The fact cannot be gainsaid, where public abattoirs have been es tablished in the colonies the result baa been an exorbitant slaughtering fee, for which the butchers receive no equivalent, aud the public benefit very doubtful—more apt to prove in course of time a public nuisance, as at Fleming ton, Victoria. Although they importeddesiecatore last year at a cost of £6000, it is probable the abattoirs will have to be removed, as recom mended in tte report of the Sanitary Com mission.
