154: FIXE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 



prevalence in this country. Every experienced meat 

 producer knows that a pound of well fatted mutton 

 can be grown more cheaply than a pound of any 

 other well fatted meat. And our consumers are dis- 

 covering that it is as palatable and nutritious as any 

 other kind of animal food, and wastes materially less 

 in cooking than beef.* The choicest qualities now 

 command higher prices in our markets than the 

 choicest qualities of beef. Its consumption is rapidly 

 increasing in cities, f and also in small inland local 

 markets and on farms, because prime lamb or mutton 

 can always be supplied in the latter places, whereas 

 meat from large well fatted beeves cannot be, unless 



* The Report on Sheep Husbandry made to the Mass. Board of 

 Agriculture in 1860, by a committee appointed by that body, thus 

 condenses the result of various experiments on this subject: " English 

 chemists and philosophers, by a series of careful experiments, find that 

 100 Ibs. of beef, in boiling, lose 26^ Ibs., in roasting 32 Ibs., and in 

 baking 30 Ibs. by evaporation and loss of soluble matter, juices, water 

 and fat. Mutton lost by boiling 21 Ibs., and by roasting 24 Ibs. ; or in 

 another form of statement, a leg of mutton costing raw, 15 cents, 

 would cost boiled and prepared for the table, 18| cents a pound; 

 boiled fresh beef would, at the same price, cost 19^ cents per pound ; 

 sirloin of beef raw, at 16 cents, costs roasted 24 cents, while a leg 

 of mutton at 15 cents, would cost roasted only 22 cents. (See Secre- 

 tary's Report, p. 97.) 



f The Report just quoted from states, that " at Brighton (near Bos- 

 ton), 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 ;" that 

 "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." (Secretary's Report, p. 96.) This is but 

 an example of the general change. It has not been produced so much 

 by increase of population, as by a change in the habits of our 

 population. 



