. Cyclopedia of farm animals. Domestic animals; Animal products. 10 THE TLACE OF THE DOMESTIC ANIMAL IN OUR CIVILIZATION value is due to the greater cost of producing ani- mals, but, without question, it is in part due to the greater intrinsic worth of the animals. In 1850, sheep in this country produced pounds of wool. Fig. 12. Use of elephants in the forests of Burma. per fleece; in 1900 they produced pounds per fleece. While in fifty years sheep have not quite doubled in numbers, the amount of wool produced has increased more than five times. A large part of this improvement in wool
. Cyclopedia of farm animals. Domestic animals; Animal products. 10 THE TLACE OF THE DOMESTIC ANIMAL IN OUR CIVILIZATION value is due to the greater cost of producing ani- mals, but, without question, it is in part due to the greater intrinsic worth of the animals. In 1850, sheep in this country produced pounds of wool. Fig. 12. Use of elephants in the forests of Burma. per fleece; in 1900 they produced pounds per fleece. While in fifty years sheep have not quite doubled in numbers, the amount of wool produced has increased more than five times. A large part of this improvement in wool production is due to breeding and not to feeding, and offers one of the most striking illustrations of the economic applica- tion of the principles of breeding. This constitutes a present to society on the part of American breeders annually greater than the combined chari- ties of the captains of industry. The increase per cow in the production of milk, and more particu- larly of butter-fat, in the same period would hardly be less striking if statistics existed to show it. When the first American Fat Stock Show was instituted in Chicago in 187S, prizes were offered for four-year-old steers. Today, no Fat Stock Show in America offers premiums for a steer that has reached the age of three years. If animals can be matured in their third instead of their fifth year, it is obvious that a much less number of animals must be kept on the farm in order to supply the same number for slaughter. In 1848, Randall, writing of Cleveland Bay horses, then recently imported to America, spoke of them as enormously large horses. With the importation of Louis Napo- leon into Ohio in 1851, the breeding of draft horses began in earnest in this country. The ordinary farm horse in America today is probably 25 per cent more effective than it was then. In riding thirty miles on a railway train in northern Illinois recently, twenty-five teams were observed working on the land. Two were two-horse teams, s
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