Ko. 4.] BEEF PRODUCTION. 63 



States in some important features of municipal organization, 

 and has no unit comparable with the incorporated village in 

 other parts of the country, so that the census officers, in making 

 this distribution of the population, have classed as urban all 

 those New England towns which contain 2,500 or more in- 

 habitants. Many of these towns have, of course, considerable 

 areas that are truly rural in their character, so that the rural 

 population may perhaps be slightly decreased in New England 

 from this cause. 



In the United States, as a whole, in 1910, 53.7 per cent, of 

 the total population were classed as rural, whereas in New 

 England only 16.7 per cent, were so classed. This shows a 

 much larger proportion of urban population in New England 

 than in the country as a whole, which no doubt largely accounts 

 for the small numbers of domestic animals in New England in 

 proportion to the total population. I have further compared 

 the numbers of animals in the whole country and in New 

 England on the basis of the rural population rather than the 

 total population, as the census reports show that the rural 

 population per square mile in New England is practically the 

 same as the average of the whole country, the figures being 

 16.6 persons per square mile in the United States as a whole, 

 and 17 in New England. Arranging, then, the census sta- 

 tistics of the animal population on the basis of the rural popu- 

 lation we find that, as compared with the country as a whole, 

 New England had in 1900 nearly twice as many dairy cattle 

 as the average of the whole country, and that while dairy 

 cattle had undoubtedly increased as compared with the rural 

 population in the whole country, they had decreased from 

 796 per thousand to 767 per thousand in New England, showing 

 that even in this most important branch of animal husbandry 

 there had been a marked decrease in the last decade. The 

 numbers of cattle, other than dairy cattle, swine and sheep, 

 it will be seen are markedly less, ranging from less than one- 

 third to about one-half as many in New England as in the 

 country as a whole, and the numbers of swine alone show a 

 slight increase in the decade; but it will be seen that the total 

 numbers of swine are still insignificant in New England as 

 compared with the country as a whole. 



