CLIMATE ADAPTED TO DIFFERENT BREEDS. 85 



ordinary times, when the natural conditions - of the market 

 are not unsettled by war,) to grow first-class mutton sheep 

 throughout most of Kew England, excepting Vermont and the 

 northern halves of New Hampshire and Maine — throughout 

 the eastern portions of New York and Pennsylvania — and 

 throughout a belt of country round every city and village, 

 wider or narrower according to its population — than it is to 

 grow the wool sheep proper. And this area of mutton 

 production must steadUy increase, pushing back wool 

 production further from the sea-board and from all dense 

 aggregations of population. 



While the preceding facts, in my opinion, admit of no 

 reasonable question, it is nevertheless equally true that the 

 demand for wool in the United States is, as I shall presently 

 show, far less adequately supplied already with the domestic 

 product — and that this demand must of absolute necessity go 

 on increasing forever in the same ratio with the increase of 

 our entire population — so that, in the aggregate, the amount 

 of land and other capital, which can be profitably invested in 

 its production will always exceed that which can be profitably 

 invested in mutton production, in the proportion of almost 

 himdreds to one. Our vast interior regions, with the 

 exceptions already indicated in the vicinity of cities, and with 

 certain others which it is not necessary to specify here — in 

 other words, aU regions remote from meat markets or from 

 which the transportation to such markets is distant or 

 expensive — can be more profitably devoted to the production 

 of wool as a leading object than mutton. 



It wiU be seen from all the foregoing that there is, 

 properly speaking, no competition whatever between the 

 mutton growing and the wool growing sheep — that their 

 respective profitableness is purely a question of place and 

 some other circumstances which I am about to name — and 

 that to raise that question abstractly, and independently of 

 these local and other considerations, as is often done, is almost 

 as irrelevant and unmeaning as it would be to ask which is 

 the most profitable mode of transportation, ships or locomo- 

 tives, without having reference to the fact whether such 

 transportation must be made by land or water. I will now 

 proceed to examine the other qualifying local circumstances, 

 besides those of market. 



Climate.^ The English improved mutton sheep in its 

 present perfect development of all the points which constitute 



