1850. 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
291 
amount of fresh potato has \ of a lb.; 100 lbs. of 
dry apple contain 8.37 lbs. of albumen and an equal 
weight of dry tubers has 1| lbs.; 100 lbs. of fresh 
fruit contain of casein 0.16 of a lb., and an equal 
weight of fresh tubers, 0.45 of alb.; 100 lbs. of 
dry apples have 1 lb. of casein, and the same amount 
of dry potato contains lbs. Hence it will be ob¬ 
served that 100 lbs. of fresh apple contain of albu¬ 
men and casein, 1.54 lbs.; and the same quantity of 
fresh potato 0.7 of a lb.; 100 lbs. of dry fruit have 
of albumen and casein 9.37 lbs., and an equal 
amount of dry tubers, 3.50 lbs. 
From the above it will readily be seen that in al¬ 
bumen the apple is richer than the potato, while in 
casein the reverse is the case. That the aggregate 
amount of albumen, casein and gluten in good va¬ 
rieties of the apple is more than double that of the 
same bodies in the potato; hence the former may be 
regarded richer than the latter in those bodies which 
strictly goto nourish the system, or in other words, 
to form muscle, brain, nerve, and in short assist in 
building up and sustaining the organic part of all 
the tissues of the animal body. 
Foreign and Domestic Wool. 
Eds. Cultivator —This article, on the subject 
of foreign and domestic wool, may not be without its 
use, at a time when all engaged in the most promi¬ 
nent departments of business, appear to be zealously 
engaged in devising ways and means to advance 
their own prosperity, and when, also, every journal 
that meets the eye, with the exception of those 
devoted il exclusively ’■ to the cause of religion and 
letters, by its able and studied articles, shows the 
energy, talent and capital employed to accomplish 
this worthy end. Certainly it cannot be considered 
a departure from their excellent example, if the 
wool grower, aroused by these circumstances to 
activity and vigilance, presumes to say a word in 
his own behalf, and to notice some of the obstacles 
in the way of his prosperity. 
In 1841-2, I had the honor to address to the 
public a number of articles on this subject, which, 
from the importance and novelty of the facts dis¬ 
closed, found their way into the public journals, 
and are said to have had something to do with 
destroying free trade in wool-—practiced by an in¬ 
genious application of the maximum principle, 
which in 1841, admitted out of an importation of 
15,000,000 pounds of foreign wool, 14,500,000 duty 
free. 
This effort will, at least, appear pardonable, if 
we but for a moment glance at the vast pecuniary 
importance of the wool growing interest in the 
United States, in connection with the fact, that fine 
wool is now imported, subject to, upon an average, 
a duty of two cents per lb only—which I will here¬ 
after explain. 
The manufacturers of Boston and its vicinity, 
stated, (in their memorial to Congress p.rior to 
1843,) the amount invested by wool growers of the U. 
States, to be $240,000,000, and Ex-Gov. Slade, of 
Vermont, in Congress in 1842, said the whole 
amount invested in sheep husbandry in the United 
States, exceeded $200,000,000. This is more than 
three times as much as the whole investment in 
cotton and woolen manufactures. Let us look into 
details a little, to see where we stand. By the 
census of 1840, there were about twenty millions of 
sheep in the United States, (I take it at this for 
convenience, though the return falls a fraction short.) 
Now, if we suppose our flocks to have increased 10 
per cent per annum, since 1840, the number of 
sheep in the United States, in 1850, must be 
40,000,000 at least, worth $80,000,000, and our 
last annual clip worth from $30 to 35,000,000, it 
being from ninety to one hundred million pounds. 
Three or four sheep will certainly require, for sum¬ 
mer and winter keep, one acre of land, upon an 
average—so thirteen million acres of land are re¬ 
quired for the support of all the flocks in this coun¬ 
try, and at the moderate estimate of $15 per acre, 
including buildings, fences and fixtures, worth 
$195,000,000, saying nothing about labor expended 
in the care of sheep. We have the aggregate 
amount now invested in this departmentof industry: 
In sheep.$80,000,000 
“ land.195,000,000 
Total.$275,000,000 
Good judges say the lands, &c., should be esti¬ 
mated as high as $20 per acre, and the sheep higher 
than I have above estimated them; and 10 cents a 
head per year, added to the above total amount, for 
the investment in labor for tending, feeding, shear¬ 
ing, &c. 
It should be remembered that a cent a pound on 
our annual clip of wool, makes the odds to our wool 
growers of $900,000, and I have no doubt that our 
own wool is depressed in the market 10 cents per 
lb., by too free importation of rival wools. 
Wool growing has been more profitable under the 
Tariff of 1846 than it would have been, had that of 
1842 continued, yet it has not been sufficiently so 
to prevent farmers in some sections killing off their 
flocks of fine wooled sheep—in some sections sub¬ 
stituting the dairy, in others, the long wooled breeds, 
in the expectation (mutton and lambs being in 
demand) of finding their reward. 
This has been occasioned by the immense importa¬ 
tion of foreign fine wool, principally from South 
America, east of the Andes, where nature does every 
thing, and man comparatively nothing, in the pro¬ 
duction of wool. The whole amount of wool imported 
in 1844, was 23,800,000 lbs., and in 1845, 28,800,- 
000. (I take this as stated in an article in the Jan. 
No. of the Plough, Loom and Anvil.) A large pro- 
portion of all this wool comes from Buenos Ayres, 
or the Argentine Republic, and the adjoining States; 
the finest wool-growing region in the world, where 
flocks of thousands and tens of thousands, belonging 
in many instances to enterprising foreigners, graze 
the year round, roaming over vast and almost in¬ 
terminable plains of the richest pasturage, yet of 
little value compared with our pasture lands, in a 
climate the most favorable, where the sheep is less 
subject to disease than with us, and sustained at an 
expense of land and labor vastly below that of any 
portion of the United States. 
I will here annex a description of such foreign 
wools as are generally imported into the United 
States, their cost abroad, and such facts in relation 
to each as may be important to those interested, 
making a distinction between the fine and native 
wools, which supplant our domestic wools in the 
market, and the coarse hairy wools which do not, 
but can only be used in connection with our own 
coarse long wool, or foreign, the hairy being used 
for filling in the coarsest and cheapest fabrics. The 
latter, (the hairy wool,) is not so much imported 
as it would be, because, as it appears from the offi¬ 
cial reports, it costs as much abroad as the fine and 
native wools, which rival our own. A dollars 
worth of fine wool will produce a fabric of about 
three times the value of that made from a dollars 
worth of hairy wool, therefore, practically, the duty 
