270 AGRICULTURE 



chiefly for the fleeces, mutton being of secondary consid- 

 eration. More than thirty-eight million sheep annually give 

 up their wool in the United States for the making of cloth- 

 ing and other articles for the household. 



Other products. We owe many other articles of 

 common use to some form of animal product. Our brushes 

 are made from bristles. Buttons are cut from bone. Gelatin 

 and glue are both animal products. Many soaps are made 

 from animal parts not suitable for meat. Blood and bone, 

 as we have already seen, are used for fertilizers. So com- 

 pletely are all parts of slaughtered animals saved for some 

 useful purpose that it is said nothing is lost of the pig when 

 it is killed, except the "squeal." 



It is estimated that the value for fertilizing purposes of 

 the manure of all farm animals in the United States, if 

 properly saved and applied to the soil, would annually reach 

 the stupendous amount of more than two billion dollars. 



TOPICS FOR INVESTIGATION 



1. Make a careful list of all animals belonging on your 

 home farm. Have your father help estimate what each one 

 is worth, and compute the value of all live stock, and find 

 the annual interest on this amount at six per cent. 



2. How many bushels of corn were raised on your 

 farm last year? On the basis of the time required for pro- 

 ducing a bushel of corn in 1850, how many days of nine 

 hours each would have been required to produce this crop 

 with machinery then in use? Make the same computation 

 with the wheat raised on your farm, comparing with the time 

 required to produce a bushel in 1830. 



3. Talk with your mother, and see whether you can es- 

 timate what proportion of the food used on your table 

 comes from each of the classes shown in section two. 



4. Make an investigation by reading and inquiring 

 among people of the amount of meat, butter, eggs and 

 milk used by the farming class in England, Germany, 



