AGRICULTURE. 139 



whole State ranges from about 5% for horses and mules and 

 29% for cattle to 56% for hogs and 110% for poultry. 



The amount of milk, butter, poultry and eggs consumed 

 by the average farm family in a year, obtainable by sub- 

 tracting the amount sold from the amount produced, is a 

 crude index of the standard of living, and is roughly pro- 

 portional to the value of farm buildings. Eggs are perhaps 

 the most reliable indicator for this purpose, though of 

 course it would be easy to point out discrepancies when dif- 

 ferent states or regions are compared. The average farm 

 family in the eastern division of the red hills consumes more 

 of all these things than in the western division, but that 

 difference is probably due almost entirely to the different 

 racial composition of the population, and if separate data 

 for the two races were available the whites in the western 

 division would doubtless be found to rank higher than in the 

 eastern in this respect, as they do in literacy, value of farm 

 buildings, etc. The consumption of butter on farms in all 

 parts of southern Alabama is below the State average, 

 which suggests a temperature relation, for dwellers in the 

 tropics eat much less fat than the Eskimos do. (The aver- 

 age consumption of butter per farm in 1909 was nearly 102 

 pounds in Alabama, 115 in Kentucky, 28 in Florida, and less 

 than 4 in Bade County, one of the southernmost counties 

 in Florida.) 



