54 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



On motion, tlie above reports were referred to the Auditing 

 Committee. 



Tlie Superintendents of tlie different departments filed their 

 several reports. 



Dr. A. W. Bitting, of Purdue University, addressed the meet- 

 ing, and his address reads as follows: 



OUR LIVE STOCK INTERESTS AND THEIR PROTECTION. 



If the Delegate State Board of Agriculture could assemble in the 

 amphitheater ou the Fair Grouuds to make a review of all the horses in 

 the State hitched in pairs as one continuous team, and they shoidd move 

 along at the comfortable gait of a mile in five minutes, it would require 

 one entire working week of nine hours each day with barely a half-hour 

 out for refreshments. When the Avheel horses would reach the i-eviewing 

 party, the lead team would have passed through Terre Haute, to Vincennes 

 and cut across the State to Lawrenceburg, thence to Greensburg, via 

 New Castle to Fort Wayne, after which they would turn west to Plymouth 

 and thence on the return home to Indianapolis. If when the last team of 

 horses should reach the grand stand a rest should be taken luitil the next 

 day and the mules started in the same manner, and after three hours had 

 passed as a grand finale, it would require the massing of the animals 

 twenty abreast around the entire track to get out of the way of the re- 

 turning lead team. 



If the dairy cows could be gotten into one barn and arranged in two 

 rows, the barn would extend the entire length of the Lake Erie & Western 

 track from Michigan City to Indianapolis and then reach beyond to Shel- 

 byville. If the beef stock were collected into one large yard it wovUd need 

 to be nine times as large as the whole of the State Fair Grounds, or cover 

 1,8.33 acres. The hogs would require 2,30(5 acres more, and the sheep would 

 have a lot one and one-fourth miles long and one mile wide, or a tract 

 one mile Avide and seven and one-half miles long. 



These facts present to lis a picture of very large live stock interests. 

 The regrettable part of the picture is that Avhile that immense procession 

 of horses was passing, a number sufficient to make a solid procession 

 nineteen and one-half miles long, a similar line of mules one and a half 

 miles long were not able to keep up with the pace, and the number of 

 cattle, hogs and sheep that could not be brought to the market would be 

 sufficient to give more than a quarter of beef, two and one-half carcasses 

 of hogs, and a third of a sheep for each inhabitant of the city of In- 

 dianapolis. 



