84 MUTTON MARKET OF UNITED STATES. 



markets than the first quality of beef. The extent and 

 rapidity of the change in our cities receives a striking 

 illustration from the following facts stated in Mr. GrennelFs 

 Report to the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, 1860: 



" At Brighton (near Boston,) on the market day previous 

 to Christmas, 1839, two Franklin county men held 400 sheep, 

 every one in the market, and yet so ample was that supply, 

 and so inactive the demand, that they could not raise the 

 market half a cent a pound, and finally sold with difficulty ;" 

 and "just twenty years after that, at the same place, on the 

 market day previous to Christmas, 1859, five thousand four 

 hundred sheep changed from the drover to the butcher." 



The history of Boston in this respect is but the history of 

 all oiir larger cities, towns and villages. When this taste 

 fully extends to our rural population when our laboring 

 farmers learn, as they ought to learn and will learn, that 

 eating fat pork all the year round is not most conducive to 

 health and to an enlarged general economy when they 

 acquire the habit, as they so conveniently could, of killing 

 mutton habitually for household and neighborhood consump- 

 tion in its fresh state* our people, now the greatest 

 consumers of animal food among the civilized nations of the 

 world, will become by far the greatest consumers of mutton 

 in the world. I doubt whether the enormous amount which 

 will be annually grown and consumed in this country, within 

 fifty years, has yet occurred to our most sanguine advocates 

 of mutton sheep. 



It is a fixed fact, thoroughly settled by the experience of 

 England, and beginning to be well understood in extensive 

 regions of our country, that where the market for mutton is 

 large and near by, and the local circumstances are favorable 

 to its culture, its production, if well understood and conducted, 

 is more profitable as a leading object, than the production of 

 wool. The Merino was introduced into England under the 

 most favorable auspices, and its propagation fostered by 

 kingly example and encouragement. But neither as a wool 

 sheep proper, nor when bred into what may be termed a half 

 mutton sheep, has it been able to compete at all successfully 

 with the pure mutton breeds. Where the soils and surround- 

 ings are suitable, it is already becoming more profitable (in 



* The frequent killing of beeves on farms, to be eaten fresh, is not convenient on 

 account of their size. In warm weather, the meat could not usually be disposed of 

 without salting down, unless the farmer should change his occupation to that of a 

 traveling meat peddler. It is not so with the sheep. Three or four farmers could join 

 together to buy all the meat, or to kill alternately and divide the carcass. 



