54 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



country is fully 600,000,000 pounds, and that the cheese ex- 

 ceeds 200,000,000 pounds a year. 



The dairy business of this country has developed with 

 such rapidity and to such a degree of importance, with the 

 aid of the highest intelligence and the application of the most 

 consummate skill, as to be regarded as one of the highest 

 triumi^hs of modern agriculture. Its annual product amounts 

 to over $400,000,000, and the capital invested in it does not 

 fall short of $700,000,000. It gives employment to a vast 

 number of hands, and contributes to the comfort and the 

 health and the wealth of all classes of the community. 



THE PACKING BUSINESS. 



Another product of the cattle-husbandry of the country, 

 and a most important one, whether considered from a financial 

 point of view merely, or as furnishing a vast amount of food 

 for the sustenance of mankind, is represented in the value of 

 animals slaughtered or sold for slaughter, and by the census of 

 1870 we find this item amounts to about $400,000,000, or more 

 accurately, $398,956,376, a gain in ten years of very nearly 

 $200,000,000. This, of course, includes the pork-packing 

 business, till recently confined, to a large extent, to certain 

 Western cities, but now carricd*on as a growing business at 

 many convenient points along our great lines of railway in 

 other parts of the country. 



Improvement in swine began less than three-quarters of a 

 century ago. The first that excited any general interest was 

 made by some animals sent from Woburn Abbey, by the Duke 

 of Bedford, to General "Washington. The Englishman in- 

 trusted with the care of delivering them seized an opportu- 

 nity to sell them on their arrival in this country, but they 

 were bred and became "popular, and from all accounts they 

 were splendid animals, small and fine in the bone, with a 

 deep round barrel, short in the leg, feeding easily, and ma- 

 turing early. They were long known as the Woburn breed, 

 and in some sections as the Bedford hog, and were originated 

 by a fortunate cross of the Chinese and the large English hog 

 ■ of that day. They would weigh from four to seven hundred 

 pounds at a year old, with light oflfal and most excellent qual- 

 ity of flesh. They became very common in Maryland, Dela- 



