188 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



A Mkans of Settling New Territories, Pastoral sheep hus- 

 bandry is of the first importance to the nation as the most effective 

 means of settling and improving the vast unoccupied lands of the 

 new or vacant States of the West and South. Of all the products 

 of agriculture, wool is most capable of transportation ; or, in 

 other words, the greatest value can be placed in the smallest bulk, 

 in a form liable to receive the least injury in the friction of trans- 

 portation. When the freight of wheat from Chicago to the sea- 

 board costs eighty per cent, of its value, of pork thirty per cent, 

 and of beef twenty-one per cent., that of wool is but four per 

 cent.; wool, therefore, may be grown with profit in the districts 

 of the remotest interior favorable to its production. 



Sheep in Russia. No industrial movement of the present cen- 

 tury is more marked than the development of the pastoral sheep 

 husbandry, upon a vast scale, in new countries, distant from the 

 markets where the products are sold. The manufacturing centres 

 of Europe derive their chief supply from distant and newly 

 occupied regions. The wool production of England remains 

 stationary ; that of Germany, Austria and France is declining, 

 Russia alone, among the European nations, with her vast unoccu- 

 pied lands, is extending her sheep husbandry aS the readiest 

 means of occupying her distant possessions. The numbers of 

 her sheep in the Russian empire reach the enormous figure of 

 65.387,000. Single proprietors have not less than 400,000 

 animals. While Great Britain has 133 sheep to each hundred 

 inhabitants, France 97 and Prussia 93, the whole Russian empire 

 has 81, and certain provinces, as those of Central Asia, have 565 

 sheep for each hundred inhabitants. The culture of sheep 

 receives the most watchful care from this eminently paternal gov- 

 ernment. This was well illustrated at the International Exposition. 

 The choicest exhibit was made by an Archduchess. The imperial 

 commissioner, himself a privy councillor, would not trust the 

 explanation of the wool exhibits for awards to a subordinate, 

 declaring, as he pointed out the characteristics of each exhibit 

 with striking minuteness of information, that " this industry was 

 peculiarly under the care of his government " 



Argentine Republic. Although the Argentine Republic did not 

 seriously undertake the culture of merinos until 1826, she num- 

 bers now 51,500,260 sheep, producing 216,000,000 pounds of wool. 



