THE PORCINE FAMILY. 55 



ware, and Virginia, and they were sent to Colonel Timothy 

 Pickering of Massachusetts, and became well known in that 

 part of the country. They are now extinct. The Byfield 

 breed, so popular for many years, originated in the same way. 

 China thus did a good thing for our agriculture fifty years ago 

 and more. 



Previous to the introduction and difiusion of the Woburn, 

 the Byfield, the Mackay, and more recently the Sufi'olk, the 

 Berkshire, the Essex, and other popular English breeds, the 

 classes of swine that prevailed in the Eastern and Middle, and 

 especially the Southern and Western States, were coarse, 

 large-boned, long-legged, and unprofitable creatures, better 

 calculated for sub-soilers than for the pork-barrel, though the 

 grass-fed hog had done something to improve them as early 

 as the time of the importation of merino sheep. But it soon 

 became settled that neither the Eastern nor the Middle States 

 could compete with the West in the production of pork upon 

 a large scale, on account of the difierence in the cost of grain. 

 The raising and packing of pork has, therefore, grown up 

 very naturally in the Western States, and vast quantities are 

 exported from there every year. At the sime time the facil- 

 ities for carrying on this business have been so greatly multi- 

 plied that the whole packing trade has been reduced to a sys- 

 tem so perfect that it may almost be said that no particle of 

 the animal is now wasted, that all is economized, either for 

 food or in the form of some commercial product, as bristles, 

 lard, grease, stearine, soap, Prussian blue, etc., the aggre- 

 gate of which collateral industries is scarcely less important 

 than the preparation of food itself. The business involves a 

 vast amount of capital, gives labor to a vast number of men, 

 and adds amazingly to the material prosperity of the country. 



THE WOOL INTEREST. 



Sheep husbandry in this country has been subject to great 

 vicissitudes. Sheep were imported by the early settlers, by 

 the Virginia colony, as early as 1609, and they increased by 

 1648 to three thousand. The Dutch West India Company 

 introduced them about the year 1625, but they proved to be 

 too much of a temptation for dogs and wolves, for it is re- 

 corded that in 1643 there were but sixteen in that whole col- 



