_Instructions for choosing it._
MUTTON is _best_ from _Christmas_ to _Midsummer_.
When, if in its prime, (that is about four years of age,) it will feel
tender when pinched with the finger and thumb, but if older, it will
feel harder and fibrous. The grain of the lean should be a fine deep
red, the colour bright, and the fat firm and white. Wether mutton is
the best flavoured, and may be known by a prominent lump of fat at the
edge of the broadest part. Ewe mutton is paler than wether mutton, is
of a finer texture and of less value; ram mutton is strong flavoured,
high coloured, and its fat is spungy.
The mutton of the small Welch sheep, which are driven up, and fatted
on Banstead Heath, and the mutton bred and fed on the South Downs, in
Sussex, are the most esteemed in London. At Bath, the short-shanked
Dorsetshire, and the Lansdown mutton are most in request; in Yorkshire
and the northern counties, the Moor mutton; and in Norfolk and Suffolk
the long-shanked is most approved; but the sheep bred in the Fens
and deep lands of Lincolnshire, and that neighbourhood, are large,
coarse-grained, and ill-flavoured.—Mutton tastes strong of the coat in
May and June, or just before shearing.