252 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
health and comfort of the animals under their charge. Generally, no covered sheds are 
provided for horned cattle, and the yards contain no adequate convenience for the 
accommodation of cattle unloaded from trains in a fatigued condition after long travel. 
In hot weather the supply of water is insufficient, the troughs are foul, and the 
water muddy; in severe winter weather the troughs are frozen over, and the cattle 
are forced to lick the ice or to eat the frozen snow to partially satisfy their thirst. Dry 
hay is the food furnished in all seasons. The cattle-pens are filthy and unwholesome. 
Fat cattle are exposed to extreme suffering in hot weather, and fat bullocks have been 
seen lying at full length on the floor with their tongues lolling ont of their mouths, no 
water being given to them nor any thrown on their heads. 
In extreme winter weather, light steers, coming from the cars bruised and crippled, 
and unfit to withstand the cold, are exposed to great suffering ; their tails become frozen 
for several inches, and icicles depend from their flanks, ears, and beards. In wet weather 
the pens are filled with filthy slush, emitting foul and deleterious vapor, and steers 
have been dragged out from this slush and their throats cut to prevent death by snf- 
focation. Thesé facts indicate that the cattle slanghtered for the consumption of the 
city are, toa very great extent, in a feverish condition, and conseqvently nnfit for | 
human fogd. The sheep-houses are protected from the weather; but the sheep and 
lambs confined in them are always overcrowded, and when changed are badly 
treated and over-driven, and when put on the scales are packed so closely as to b 
unable to stand. Hogs receive the grossest treatment, and their pens are very filthy, 
Mr. Bergh, in his report for 1869 on cruelties to animals, st4tes that i8 
has been his practice to visit the great cattle depots of the city during 
the winter, choosing the most inclement days for his visits. In one 
yard, situated in an elevated part of the suburbs, wholly exposed to 
north and west winds, and totally unprovided with shelter, were hun- 
dreds of animals, some of them coated with ice, the result of a snow- 
fall which had partially melted and had again become frozen. Mr. 
Bergh urges the passage of a law restraining these crbelties, with pro- 
vision for an inspector of cattle-yards, with necessary assistants, and 
with authority to arrest any butcher slaughtering crippled or exhausted 
animals. 
A visit to the abattoirs, and conversations with the large butchers of 
Washington market, some of whom handle a thousand quarters in a 
day, have convinced us that the abuses above described and the slaugh- 
tering of sick and battered bullocks are on the increase. One dealer 
says that he buys lots that come on the Erie railroad in which one- 
third of the bullocks have great livid and yellow places on their loins 
and ribs. He has customers with whom the reduction of one or two 
cents per pound will always secure the sale of this anwholesome meat. 
It is doubtful whether any legislation on the transit of live-stock will 
cure the mischief. The difficulty is, to a great extent, in the nature 
of things, in the configuration of the continent, in the fixed laws of cli- 
mate. The region where the fattening grains can be grown in great 
quantities and with profit begins at a line drawn south from Cleveland 
and extends to the middle of Kansas and Nebraska. Illinois, the great 
corn State, is in the middle of this magnificent belt. The boundary 
between the corn lands and the grass lands is not sharply defined, but 
none of the pioneer settlers. think corn can be raised in quantity and 
with profit west of the mouth of the North Platte. But the immense 
region west of this produces an abundance of hardy, nutritious grass, 
on which animals can live and grow, and often become quite fat. The 
natural course of pastoral agriculture in such a country is, that the grass, 
belt should produce the cattle, and the corn belt should finish them and 
fit them for the knife. This is now, to a great extent, the course of - 
business. Those who have brought grass-fed beeves from the great 
plains directly to the eastern cities have seldom made anything in such 
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