Animals manure the soil, sustain vegetation, and, in return, vegetation sustains them.

It is a circle of existence, in

which each part and every link is useful and

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The flesh of swine furnishes more than half the meat consumed by the laboring portion of the Union, including those employed in the military and marine service and our merchant vessels. When from the best breeds, well fattened and well cured, pork forms one of the most nutritive, as it is the most popular of our meats. None is so highly relished, and on none can a greater amount of labor be performed than on sweet, corned pork. It enters into a countless number of dishes, either as flesh or lard, imparting richness, flavor, and nutrition to all. And the juicy, delicious, corn-fed, well-prepared bacon is generally an acceptable dish on every table, saving on a Jew's or a Mohammedan's. But the use and value of swine are not limited to food. Their carcasses are of vast and increasing importance in the useful and mechanical arts.

others.

When pork is abundant and cheap, large quantities of it are converted into lard and oil. This is done not only with the more exclusively fatty portion of the meat, but frequently the whole. carcass is placed in a steam bath, and all the oily particles are extracted. This, however, is purer when the skin is first taken off, that part yielding a more glutinous, viscid oil, or fat, than the remainder. When thus removed, the skin affords a portion of inferior oil, and is afterward converted into a leather, valuable for the saddle and for other purposes. The bristles are used for brushes, and the bones are made to afford some profit by being first reduced to charcoal, in which condition it is known as ivory black, and is extensively used by sugar refiners and The lard may be subjected to a pressure, which separates it into two substances, widely differing from each other, one being a pure oil, limpid in all weathers, and known as olein; the other a compact substance resembling the best mutton tallow, and melting only when exposed to considerable heat. equally suited to the purpose of illumination, the former in lamps, the latter as candles. Extensive use is made of the oil for machinery, and none is found (from its purity and freedom from gumminess) to answer a better purpose by lessening fricSuch being the value of swine to our domestic comforts and national products, every item of information that enables us to avoid disease, produce thrift, and augment their value, if intelligently and judiciously carried into practice, will produce a vast aggregate of annual profit to pork-raisers throughout the country. The above paragraphs are from the American Agriculturist, and present the facts given in a strong light. The magnitude of the interest to which they relate shows the importance of The use of recreation is to strengthen your labor and sweeten your rest.

tion.

Both are

necessary. The manure of animals and insects converts soil into vegetables, and these again sustain animalization.

The term Blue Stocking, applied to literary ladies, was conferred on a society which was called the Blue

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Stocking Club, in which females were admitted; and so

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more attention being paid to it than is usual with the generality of pork-growers. To each one the amount is not, indeed, large, but the aggregate to those not familiar with the statistics on the subject is seen to be almost incredibly large. The evils to be remedied lie within a small compass. They originate in the neglect of procuring improved breeds of the animal, and in adopting the best modes of giving feed, particularly in the process of fattening. The natural habits of swine tend to the deterioration of the stock, and unless the owner annually counteracts this tendency, before he is aware of it, he may find it has been radically changed for the worse. On this account, some

breeds which were formerly known to possess points of great excellence, at present can scarcely be found possessing distinctive attributes. This is true of the Mackay breed, produced by judicious crossings, under the supervision of the eminent merchant whose name they bore; and it may be, and doubtless is true of many others produced in a similar way, and then suffered to become extinct by neglect.

It is believed that the feeling is by no means of limited extent, that all hogs are fundamentally alike, both in regard to the size which they may reach, as well as to the quality of the meat. But skillful pork-growers will assure you that some breeds, with a given amount of expenditure in feed, will yield double the amount of flesh and lard that can be realized from others; that it is far better to purchase the former at fair prices, than to receive the latter as a gift. And they will assure you, that there is seemingly as much difference in the quality of the meat furnished by different breeds, as there may be between that of the horse and the ox, or the dog and the calf. In some, the color of the lean will be dark, the grain coarse, and the flavor strong; while that of others will be nearly as white as the breast of a turkey, tender like a young, fat chicken, and the flavor most agreeable to the cultivated taste. Facts like these should commend themselves to every pork-grower who prefers delicate and rich food to that which is unsavory and less nutritious; or who desires to make his pork cost him only two or three cents a pound, instead of four, five, or six! If the quality of the meat is of no consequence, we might as well domesticate the buzzard and the owl, as to keep on our farms the hen and the turkey. Farmers cannot well determine what their pork does cost; but they will be likely to tell you it costs more than they can sell it for. Mechanics who keep hogs will say the same. Το elicit the attention of such, we will present a few statistics on the subject, selected almost at random from agricultural jour

There are but few who know how to be idle and innocent.

called owing to a Mr. Benjamin Stillingfleet, one of its acting members, always wearing blue stockings.

The wearing of rings is very ancient. It was prohibited in Rome to all mechanics, and men of mean condition, to wear

rings of gold, so that granting a license for any person

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nals and common newspapers. The first is from the Boston Cultivator, of sixteen hogs owned by sixteen different individuals in the town of Chesterfield, Massachusetts, recently slaughtered. The weight of the sixteen was 9207 pounds, giving an average to each hog of five hundred and seventy-six pounds; the smallest was five hundred and two, and the largest seven hundred and twenty-five pounds. With inferior animals and defective feed, such results would never have been witnessed.

In 1845, Mr. Samuel Cook, of Goshen, Ct., slaughtered a pig only eight months and twenty-four days old, which weighed, when dressed, 472 pounds, being a gain, he says, of more than a pound and twelve ounces per day during the life of the pig. It was fed on corn meal and kitchen slops. He paid for it, when weighing twenty-five pounds, $2 50, and the corn given to it cost him $16 00, so that the pork cost him a little less than four cents per pound-less than two-thirds its mercantile value. In the fall of the same year, John and Samuel Foot, of Bradford, of the same State, killed four pigs, two of which were nine months and twenty days old, and the other two were nine months and twenty-eight days old, whose dressed weight was 401, 419, 423, and 473 pounds. They were from a Berkshire

cross.

Mr. John S. Yedmans, of Columbia, Ct., April 24, 1847, says, I believe there were about twenty hogs slaughtered in this town last fall and winter, which weighed over five hundred pounds each, and also the same number of pigs that weighed over three hundred pounds each, and some of them weighing near four hundred pounds, at eight and nine months old. The largest of the hogs weighed six hundred and sixty pounds, and the next largest six hundred and thirty-six; six of them making an average for each of five hundred and ninety-one and onethird pounds each. The above will do for Connecticut.

The next will be from Pennsylvania. The Ploughboy, of Newton, in that State, March 22, 1847, says, we give the weight of some hogs of the Chester county breed, so called, which have been in such great demand in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and some of which have been sent to a great distance. Franklin Comly, Esq., slaughtered one on the 25th of February, which weighed six hundred and seventy-eight pounds; William S. Doran slaughtered one in January which weighed six hundred and forty pounds; William Janney slaughtered one in February which weighed seven hundred and four pounds; and Levi Buckman, Esq., slaughtered one in March which weighed seven hundred and seven pounds; making an average of six hundred and eighty-two pounds each. All four of them had been kept for He who resigns the world is in constant possession of a serene mind.

to wear a ring, was as much as to make him a gentleman. The usage of sealing with rings is also of great antiquity.