358 
The American Cattle Trade. 
pasturage is particularly fine, and the season is longer by two 
or three months. Then in the South- West, and on most of the 
Pacific coast, nature provides luxuriant herbage the greater part of 
the year, which is self-cured for the remainder, so that the large 
herds pass the winter without shelter or feeding, and come out 
in the spring in very fair condition, as a general rule. The only 
expense of wintering in the great Plains region is a general 
supervision of the herds, the attention on the part of the herders 
being necessarily closer the farther north the cattle are kept. 
Above the 40th parallel careful selection has to be made of 
suitable spots for wintering ; but even in that latitude, west of 
the Missouri river, the dried grasses of the valleys supply the 
winter forage without labour or expense. 
For the final fitting of cattle for the shambles, viz., for fattening, 
maize or Indian corn is chiefly relied upon, and the great corn- 
producing States are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and 
Kentucky, the last year's crop of the six being over 800 millions 
of bushels. This, therefore, is naturally the great fattening 
region of the United States, for both beef and pork. It is mani- 
festly better for the farmers to turn their surplus corn into the 
more condensed value and bulk of meat at home, than to sell 
the grain there, or ship it eastward. The expense of sending a 
car-load of cattle from the Mississippi Valley to the Atlantic 
coast is just about the same as for an equal weight of corn. 
But beef-cattle when they reach New York are worth 28s. per 
cental (gross), while 100 lbs. of corn will sell for only 6s. 
Yet these variations of climate, production of forage, &c, do 
not affect the distribution of neat cattle in the States as much 
as might be expected. The ratio of such animals to every 100 
inhabitants, for example, is as follows : In New England, from 
14 in Massachusetts, to 96 in Vermont (average 47) ; Pennsyl- 
vania, New York, Kentucky, Ohio, Georgia and Missouri, 
from 38 to 66 ; in California, Oregon and Texas, 109, 132 
and 426, respectively. Ten States have over one million 
cattle each (three of them over two millions), and ten others 
over half a million ; and these States are situated from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf. In 
the older States, however, the proportion of milch-cows to 
oxen and other cattle is very much greater than in the West, 
showing the predominance of the dairy interest over beef pro- 
duction. Thus New York ranks first in the number of 
milch-cows (1,350,000), but tenth in other cattle (700,000), the 
dairy products exceeding the meat-products in value as 3 to 1 : 
Texas, on the contrary, ranks first in number of " other cattle " 
(3,400,000) and sixth in milch-cows (500,000), and its dairy 
products are not more than one-sixtieth part of those of New 
