342 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



return 44,670 swine ; our census for the same year gives 

 65,749 hogs and 69,680 pigs. The only explanation I can 

 give of this is, that on May 1, when the assessors make 

 their lists, it is for the purpose of taxation, and nothing is 

 returned beyond the extremest limit of the law. The grown 

 hogs, except mainly breeding stock, have generally been 

 slaughtered during the winter ; and the pigs that came in 

 the spring, or were farrowed the previous fall, had not, in 

 the judgment of their owners, arrived at an age sufficient to 

 undergo the rigors of taxation. But in the coming autumn, 

 when cattle shows are blooming, and in November, when 

 our State census is taken, to show the magnitude of our 

 stock-growing, with no fear of an impending tax, the returns 

 are made witli the most profuse liberality ; and, by that 

 time, every pig that squealed in May has developed into 

 shote-hood, and is recorded a hog. This may reasonably 

 account for a large difference in the two enumerations. 



A careless reading of the census for 1865 might lead one 

 to think we had lost largely in dressed meats. No doubt 

 the thousands of tons of dressed meats of all kinds, brought 

 on in refrigerator cars, have reduced our production of beef, 

 mutton and pork, but not to the extent which the incom- 

 plete census of that year would show, of over fourteen million 

 dollars' worth of dressed meat, while we show less than three 

 million in 1885. 



In 1865 all the cattle, sheep and hogs, brought from 

 abroad and slaughtered at Brighton, to the amount of over 

 four million dollars, are credited to us ; which in 1885 are 

 properly omitted, as not our products. 



Again, the price of dressed meats in the exceptional year 

 of 1865 was just about double that of 1885, which would 

 be about seven million dollars. These two amounts, with our 

 actual production of nearly three million, about equalize, 

 and show that our loss even in that line is comparatively 

 insignificant. 



Without going into any further detailed statements, I give 

 below a table showing the increase in animals and products 

 since 1845, — forty years. I take this date as of the earliest 

 agricultural statistics collected by our State, and at a time 

 when a dollar counted a hundred cents. I have taken all the 



