COMMERCE IN NEAT-STOCK. 21 



The cost of keeping has been reckoned at its market-value 

 in this vicinity, which cost might be lessened in those locali- 

 ties where the value of feed was less. 



It is not a very difficult matter to raise a creature, which 

 at two years of age shall be worth the above sum, even at 

 the present market-value of beef; not a very difficult matter 

 to raise a steer whose live-weight at two years of age shall 

 be ten or twelve hundred pounds : and in what better way 

 can the farmer dispose of the produce of his farm than to 

 such kind of stock? I have estimated the cost of raising 

 neat-stock up to the age of two years, and no further ; be- 

 cause it seems to me, that, after this age, the value of the 

 heifer and steer, if kept for beef purposes, is no longer 

 equal, the heifer, under ordinary circumstances, coming to 

 maturity sooner than the steer. And if dairying is one of 

 the pursuits of the farmer, as we contend it should be, then 

 arrangements have been already made to have the heifer new 

 milch at two years or two years and a half old, from which 

 time she will pay in milk for her yearly keeping, till four or 

 five years of age, increasing in value herself at the same 

 time. I have been somewhat minute in the above matter of 

 the cost of raising neat-stock, because I am confident that 

 there is profit in it. 



But it is our purpose in this paper to make a presentation 

 of facts showing something of the great amount of capital 

 employed in the husbandry of neat-stock in this country, 

 and in the commerce of the products of this industry ; 

 showing, also, the importance of the export trade of neat- 

 stock and its products to this country, — a trade yet only 

 in its infancy, but which shows such encouraging signs of 

 future promise, commencing as it did when there was an 

 over-supply of these products, gathering and affording an 

 outlet for vast quantities of our surplus, which we are glad 

 to learn is as gladly received by the Europeans as we are 

 glad to exchange it for " British gold." And an anxiety on 

 their part has been manifested, lest the supply should soon 

 be exhausted, they themselves being unable to provide a 

 requisite amount for home consumption ; and in consequence 

 the prices have ruled so very high, that the poorer classes are 

 unable to provide it. We learn that thousands of families 

 of the middle classes of England are unable to obtain suffi- 



