Proceedixgs of the Farmers' Club. 211 



of delicious fruit. But of all the brute creation the horse is the most 

 useful as well as the most faithful to man, and, with shame be it 

 added, the most abused, Scarcelj are the days of his infancy passed 

 than the bones, the sinews, arid muscles of which he is composed are 

 brought into requisition, and from this time imtil his earthly career 

 is run his existence becomes an uninterrupted contest with his natural 

 enemy — man — and this for no other fault than serving him too well. 

 A distinguished French moralist has said, ^^de tons les etres de la 

 creation, le plus cruel c'est Vhomrae.'''' The most blood-thirsty and 

 cruel beast slays his enemy with the dispatch which hate or hunger 

 dictates, but it was reserved for that being which was fashioned after 

 his divine master in form, civilized man, to employ the subtle ele- 

 ments of cultivated reason in auo-mentino; the sufferings of his human 

 foe and his dependent cattle. Prompted by this melancholy idiosyn- 

 cracy of the race, societies have sprung up in Europe, in Asia, and 

 Africa, and of late here in America, for the defense of that vast 

 body of God's creation called — sometimes, I think, miscalled — the 

 lower animals. If I may be allowed a short digression here, I would 

 show this audience what in a mere pecuniary point of view is the 

 value in the United States of these only five species of animals ; or, 

 in othffl- words, to make the thoughtless and the cruel conscious of a 

 fact of which they must be ignorant, that these five species of ani- 

 mals alone are of more productive value to the country than all the 

 men and women in it. In short, I venture to assert that without 

 them commerce, agriculture — nay, civilization itself — is impossi- 

 ble. In 1860 the domestic animals in the United States were 

 9,000,000 horses and mules, 29,000,000 neat cattle, 24,000,000 

 sheep, and 37,000,000 swine. Since 1850 they have increased as 

 follows : Horses and mules had doubled in number, neat cattle had 

 increased by one-half, sheep by one-tenth, swine by one-fifth. Their 

 aggregate value was $1,000,000,000, having exactly doubled in the 

 ten years from 1850. One-tenth of the whole valuation was owned 

 in Xew York State alone. Their approximative annual revenue in 

 1860 was : Labor, exclusive of cost of feeding, &c., calculating 

 12,000,000 working horses, mules and yokes of oxen, and the labor 

 of each at fifty cents a day for 300 working days only, would be 

 $1,800,000,000 per annum ; animals slaughtered for food, worth 

 $250,000,000 ; butter, 460,000,000 lbs., worth $90,000,000 ; cheese, 

 100,000,000 lbs., worth $10,000,000 ; wool, 60,000,000 lbs., worth 

 $24,000,000. I regret that I could not obtain the valuation of fowls, 



