134 TINE WOOL SHEEP HUSBANDRY. 
prevalence in this country. Every experienced meat 
producer knows that a pound of well fatted mutton 
can be grown more cheaply than a pound of any 
other well fatted meat. And our consumers are dis- 
covering that it Is as palatable and nutritious as any 
other kind of animal food, and wastes materially less 
in cooking than beefi* The choicest qualities now 
command higher prices in our markets than the 
choicest qualities of beef. Its consumption is rapidly 
increasing in cities,f and also in small inland local 
markets and on farms, because prime lamb or mutton 
can always be supplied in the latter places, whereas 
meat from large well fatted beeves cannot be, unless 
* The Report on Sheep Husbandry made to the Mass. Board of 
Agriculture in 1860, by a committee appointed by that body, thus 
condenses the result of various experiments on this subject: “ English 
chemists and philosophers, by a series of careful experiments, find that 
100 lbs. of beef, in boiling, lose 26} lbs., in roasting 32 Ibs., and in 
baking 30 lbs. by evaporation and loss of soluble mater, juices, water 
and fat. Mutton lost by boiling 21 Ibs., and by roasting 24 lbs.; orin 
another form of statement, a leg of mutton costing raw, 15 cents, 
would cost boiled and prepared for the table, 18} cents a pound; 
boiled fiesh beef would, at the same price, cost 19} cents per pound ; 
sirloin of beef raw, at 164 cents, costs roasted 24 cents, while 4 leg 
of mutton at 15 cents, would cost roasted only 22 cents. (See Sccre- 
tary’s Report, p. 97.) 
+ The Report just quoted from states, that “at Brighton (near Bos- 
ton),on the market day previous to Christmas, 1839, two Franklin 
county men held 400 sheep, every one in the market, and yet so ample 
was that supply and so inactive the demand, that they could not raise 
the market half a cent a pound, and finally sold with difficulty ;” that 
“just twenty years after that at the same place, on the market day 
previous to Christmas, 1859, five thousand four hundred sheep changed 
from the drover to the butcher.’’ (Secretary’s Report, p. 96.) This is but 
an example of the general change. It has not been produced so much 
by increase of population, as by a change in the habits of our 
population, 
