384' , Transactions of the American Institute. 



posts, six cents apiece ; cottonwood fencing, from $1.50 to $1.65 per 

 100 ; a good market for all that can be produced, two railroads trav- 

 ersing them north and south, and the Missouri river on the western 

 boundary, a delightful and salubrious climate, an abundance of 

 timber, limestone everywhere abundant, coal in inexhaustible quan- 

 tities, good water from twenty-five to thirty feet, springs abundant. 

 We are about midway between the two great channels of emigra- 

 tion — one across the Missouri, at Omaha, the other at Kansas City ; 

 and those seeking locations, hardly ever get this distance from the 

 usual course of travel ; hence thousands are rushing to the trackless 

 plains of Kansas and Nebraska, where an emigrant sometimes is 

 obliged to go ten miles to get a stake to lariat his team while they 

 feed, saying nothing about fire-wood, fencing or building timber. 

 Since the 20th February, the day we commenced plowing this spring, 

 we have had only two days entirely cloudy, twenty-nine days half- 

 clouded, the rest fair; four showers, in which over half an inch of 

 water fell, thirteen showers of less than half an inch at a time. Last 

 winter we had two days that a sleigh could be used to haul a load. 

 The ground was frozen. about two months; most of the time the 

 surface was dry and dusty. Cattle usually winter in the corn-fields 

 till the frost leaves the ground ; then they are shut up, and, till grass 

 starts, depend on straw and hay-stacks. At present, hay, to an 

 ulimited amount, can be had on the prairies free ; each one cuts when 

 and where he chooses. Cow*s are worth from thirty-five to forty dol- 

 lars ; good choice teams of young horses from $300 to $350, and from 

 that down to $120, according to quality. Building materials, dressed 

 pine shingles, laths, doors, sashes, and blinds are as cheap as in any 

 of the towns in the interior of New York. 



Mr. Curtis — I hope that the gentlemen who represent the press 

 here will not cut down this letter. I am one of the people, and as 

 an honest farmer, with hayseed in his hair and an odor of the barn- 

 yard about him, I must be allowed to think that these descriptions 

 of localities, when they are so evidently conscientious, as this one 

 seems to be, are not the least important part of the record of our 

 doings. 



Swine Herd-books. 



Mr. F. D. Curtis — When we take into account that at least thirty 



million hogs are slaughtered annually, and that the number is rapidly 



increasing each year, the importance of doing anything to advance 



this great domestic auxiliary is apparent, and a swine herd-book, in 



