58 Missouri Ayricultural Report. 



friends as perhaps it now is in Missouri, and the beef business was 

 able to take care of itself, as it yet is with us. Now the dairy busi- 

 ness dominates in the east and they are trying to coax back the 

 vanished beef industry. 



Thus, as the country becomes older, its land divided into smaller 

 farms, and the people get on a more economical basis and con- 

 servative basis in both production and consumption, the beef in- 

 dustry is the first to wane. In its stead, as a rule, comes dairying. 

 First, in combination with beef, it is true, but later, especially in 

 the vicinity of the large cities and among the most congested cen- 

 ters, it becomes a highly specialized industry. In the rural dis- 

 tricts this combination of beef and dairying has thus far remained 

 stable in the oldest European countries, with dairying as the prin- 

 cipal feature and beef as an adjunct. 



Broadly speaking, the next class of beef products to diminish, 

 outside of the mountain and the strictly grazing regions, is the 

 sheep. Then follows the hog, although on account of the use to 

 which the hog may be put as a consumer of waste products around 

 the household, he remains to this day a prominent feature in the 

 agriculture of the most densely populated regions of the country. 



As countries become still more populous, vegetable diets sup- 

 plant practically all forms of animal products, the one standing out 

 to the last being poultry. 



While it is true that the fowl, when charged up with all the 

 feed consumed, produces the most costly animal products known, 

 at the same time it lives so largely off the products that would 

 otherwise go to waste, is so well adapted to living in close prox- 

 imity with people themselves, that it is perhaps the most perma- 

 nent animal industry that we have. It is an interesting fact that 

 this is the only animal industry that China has left. She has long 

 since ceased to produce beef, if she was ever a beef producing 

 country. The dairy cow has been driven out, if this industry was 

 ever established there. But the duck and the goose and the chicken 

 are still there in such quantities that this constitutes one of China's 

 most important export products. Even as well adapted as the State 

 of California is to the production of poultry, San Francisco buys 

 eggs from China by the hundreds of thousands each year. The 

 fowls themselves are exported in large quantities to this country. 

 It is likewise interesting that much of the albumen used in sen- 

 sitizing of photographic plates comes from China, and is made 

 from the egg. 



