STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 339 



rural district, to buy an inch or two of ribbon for a bonnet, a bloomer, 

 or a Grecian bend. 



You see, Mr. Farmer, by the above figures, the immense wealth the 

 biddies produce. Is it not worth your while to pay a little more atten- 

 tion to your stock of poultry? Give them plenty of fresh water, gravel, 

 o-ood grub, clean roosts and shelters, and keep only the best breeds. The 

 most "popular breeds now are the black Spanish, crested or Poland, 

 Dominiques, Dorkings, the pugnacious game bantams, Shanghai or the 

 Asiatic varieties. The raising of poultry and eggs for market may 

 appear to many but a trifling concern. There is no branch of rural 

 economy more sure and profitable. It not only produces an immense 

 article of consumption and commerce, but it enlivens and beautifies our 

 homes. In England and Continental Europe it is an immense traffic, 

 but Uncle Sam's citizens have had no time yet to spare on this " small 

 fry." 



Leaving fowls, we will spend a few moments upon something fouler — 

 swine. This State contained, by official figures in eighteen hundred and 

 sixty-seven, four hundred and twelve thousand five hundred and seven 

 hogs. Raising swine, in all countries, is a profitable business; particu- 

 larly so in California, as, like our poultry, they find their own grub and 

 shelter, costing the producer but a trifle aside from his trouble. Mr. Hog 

 gets his growth and fat either under the millions of oak trees, or picks 

 up the tens of thousands of bushels of grain left in the harvest fields by 

 a too common and slovenly practice of harvesting. If our farmers 

 would substitute the Berkshire, Suffblks or Chesterwhites, for the slab- 

 sided, long nosed tule-rooter, so common in this State, a breed that, the 

 more they eat the poorer the} T get. he would not only get a much larger 

 profit, but would be able to find his stock of swine when he needs them, 

 without a week's ride on a worse animal, the bucking mustang, to hunt 

 them up. But I do not propose to say much about the hog, being too 

 much of a Jew. Jews, you know, will not eat pig, yet his flesh is con- 

 sumed by a greater portion of the human race. Sometimes the apothe- 

 cary makes use of Mr. Hog by making lard "sparmaciti" for healing 

 unctions; also compounds it into many rejuvinating ointments, which 

 would astonish the pig, did he know or understand his destiny, or reflect, 

 while wallowing in mud and fat, that he would sometime be bottled for 

 "cod liver oil," or " bear's grease," or spread into a " poor man's plaster," 

 or the all-curing "Russian salve," to help the feeble man the better to 

 grunt and sweat under the ills human flesh is heir to. There is one 

 instance of the pork packing business in the States worth a minute's 

 time to mention. Mr. Hancock, of the firm of Cragin & Co., Chicago, 

 one of the Chicago commercial party, who recently visited this State, 

 told me while in Stockton, that his firm took account of stock a year 

 since, and found on hand seventy-one thousand barrels of pork, worth 

 three million dollars; also, had on hand bacon, in value, five hundred 

 thousand dollars. I should think this was some pork. This firm 

 slaughtered the same year thirty-one thousand head of cattle, and are 

 now preparing to slaughter in Southern Louisiana fifty thousand head 

 this fall. This is the way our Chicago neighbors do up business. 



A word for the bovine race : We had in this State, by the last official 

 figures, five hundred and three thousand and forty-six head of cattle, in 

 value (at forty dollai'S per head, the average price), twenty million dol- 

 lars. Milch cows, one hundred and efghty-six thousand, valued at fifty 

 dollars per head, three hundred thousand dollars. These cows should 

 produce yearly, of butter, two hundred pounds to the cow. or thirty-seven 



