farther eastward than the Indian-corn regions of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri, where they are cheaply fattened for killing, some 2,000 carcases being forwarded every week to British markets. They are shipped at New York, New Jersey, Chicago and Philadelphia to London, Liverpool, or Glasgow, and brought over in fine condition in large refrigerating steamers, each of which carries from 800 to 3,000 quarters. Fresh American meat can thus be sold at British ports at about 6d., per lb. leaving a profit; but there is little chance of the British consumer getting it at anything like a reasonable price, as long as he is in the hands of the British butcher.

The greatest speciality, however, of the American provision trade is that of hog-packing, which is carried on to an enormous extent at Chicago, Cincinnati and a few smaller cities, the former being the head-quarters of the trade. The great hog-raising States are those which produce the most maize or Indian corn, and the bulk of the hog-packing is carried on in the winter, although of recent years there has been a summer business also at Chicago. In this city alone the number of hogs killed and converted into pork in 1878 was 4,009,311. The operation of killing and packing is done with such celerity as to be almost magical, it being commonly stated that a hog enters at one end of the establishment and emerges in a few minutes packed in a barrel. One firm in Chicago packs during the year 140,000 tons of hogs, enough to afford 45 freight loads daily; and to accommodate the continual stream of animals which arrive in the city, stockyards have been constructed which cover

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over 30,000 farms are laid under contribution for these supplies. At Little Falls (New York) more than 25,000,000 lbs. of cheese from the factories annually change hands, and still more at the town of Utica. In 1878 the American cheese exports amounted to 134,000,000 lbs.

Mention has been made in the preceding chapter of the grain that is grown in the different States. In addition to the capital and industry involved in this, the milling or "flouring " interests are of immense importance. There is scarce a town of any size, especially if it possess water power, that does not contain, more or less, large flour or grist mills, while in some of the States the preparation of flour for export is on a huge scale. The State of Minnesota is one of the busiest in this direction, being almost entirely occupied with milling and timber cutting. There are in this State 405 flour mills, of which 105 are run by steam and the remainder by water power. When working at their full capacity, these mills, which are principally at Minneapolis and St. Paul's, will produce 111,167,550 barrels of flour, consuming in the process 55,837,500 bushels. In connection with the export of flour and grain, it should be mentioned that a vast industry is caused in the matter simply of loading and forwarding. Chicago is again the leader in this branch of business, and the warehouses for storing, and the elevators for loading and unloading, are on a gigantic scale.

Sugar is an article of considerable importance as an American staple, though its growth and manufacture is almost entirely limited to one State, that of Louisiana, which possesses, in the delta of the Missis

sippi, an area of 200 miles long by 100 broad, the finest land possible for the product of cane sugar. The yield in 1878 was 213,221 hogsheads, though the cane crop is somewhat fluctuating. In the Northern States, and particularly those which approach the Canadian border, such as the New England States and Michigan, there is a considerable manufacture of of sugar from the maple tree; but although the consumption is great, maple sugar is more a branch of domestic industry than a national one. The consumption of sugar in the United States in 1878 was 685,670 tons, and of molasses 43,812,509 gallons, but by far the largest portion of this was imported.

Tobacco, like sugar, is limited to a few of the Southern States as far as the growth and cultivation go, though, the Americans being a nation extraordinarily addicted to smoking and chewing, there is scarce a city of any size which does not include the preparation of tobacco and cigar-making as one of its industries. Kentucky, of which its inhabitants say "that the sun never shone upon a fairer country," is the tobacco-raising State, the soil suiting the plant so well that 1,400 lbs. have been produced from a single acre. In 1873 Kentucky yielded 152,000,000 lbs., which is about three times the amount produced by Virginia, the next tobacco-growing State. Before the separation of America from English rule, vast fortunes were made by the cultivation of tobacco, and an interesting description is given of those times and places in Thackeray's novel, "The Virginians."

Salt is an article of considerable abundance in many of the States, particularly the Western ones, as

though nature had provided the great stock-feeding areas with this necessary condiment for man and beast. Arkansas, Michigan, Indiana, and other States, have good supplies from salt springs, while Utah, Nebraska, and Nevada are furnished with inexhaustible salt basins. In the latter State, salt beds extend over 50 square miles in Esmeralda County, with incrustations of pure salt, and in the south-east there are "salt bluffs" 500 feet high, forming a mass of rocksalt 2 miles long and 1 mile wide. Utah is also a great natural salt basin, the water of the Salt Lake, 100 miles long by 50 wide, being so salt that no fish will live in it.

FORESTS AND THE LUMBER TRADE.

No account of the industrial resources of the United States, however brief, should omit mention of the forests and woods, or of the great trade that is carried on in "lumber," or, in other words, timber. A sawmill is about the earliest form of manufacturing civilization in the New World, and no community of colonists can begin life without it. The forests of America are so extensive and varied, that the use of wood is carried to a far greater extent than in England, where forests have well-nigh disappearedand the consequence is that a large industry has grown up all over the States, first in sawing lumber or