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X. Brighton Market. — The great Cattle Fair of the 

 State, and indeed of New England, is held at the beautiful vil- 

 lage of Brighton, about six miles from Boston, on the Monday 

 of every week. Here capacious pens are erected for the recep- 

 tion of such live stock as may be brought in, and the drovers 

 and butchers assemble from all directions. The business of sell- 

 ing and buying is principally got through with on Monday, 

 though cattle and other stock, when prices are not satisfactory 

 to the seller, are frequently kept over, for a week or fortnight, 

 for a better market. With the exception of a small fair at Dan- 

 vers, in Essex county, held occasionally in the fall, I know of 

 no other cattle fair in New England. Cattle, sheep and swine 

 are brought here from the interior of the State, from Maine, 

 New Hampshire, Vermont — from New York, and sometimes 

 from Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky.* Ordinari- 

 ly few sheep are ever brought to market except it be weth- 

 ers fatted or to be fatted. Great numbers of pigs and shoats 

 are driven here to be sold for keeping, but except an occasional 

 drove from some distillery establishment few fat hogs are 

 sold here either alive or dead. Nor is it any mart for horses, 

 though occasionally they are brought here for sale. The cat- 

 tle principally consist of young stock for wintering, working 

 oxen, milch cows with their calves, and fat cattle for barrelling 

 and for the retail market in the city and vicinity. The cattle 

 for barrelling are taken at once to the large slaughtering and 

 packing establishments, where they are disposed of accordingly ; 

 and fat cattle are likewise purchased for the butchers by the 



* 1 ascertained some time since at the Bull's Head Market, in New York, 

 that the expense of a drove of cattle consisting of one hundred head from 

 the vicinity of Lexington, Kentucky, to that place, including the expenses 

 of one night and a day in New York, was 1300 dollars, or 13 dollars per 

 head. This was at a season when the drovers could avail themselves of 

 pasturage. The price of corn is not recollected. They came in in good 

 condition. 



Store hogs or shoats, driven moderately in the mild season and well fed 

 on the road, will gain in flesh, it is said by some, almost sufficiently to pay 

 the expenses of their drift. 



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