Volltext Seite (XML)
GENERAL REPORT OF THE JUDGES OF GROUP IX. 35 Shepherd has been pronounced the best book ever published on any branch of agriculture. Other eminent writers on this subject are Mr. George Geddes, whose contributions have appeared in the New York Weekly Tribune; Mr. A. M. Garland, of Illinois, the editor of the sheep department of the Live Stock Journal—at present the fullest and most trustworthy source of information available to American wool-growers; and Messrs. Glenn & Co., of Pennsylvania, contributors to the Practical Farmer. The Bulletin of the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, in six volumes, has notices of much of the foreign literature bearing upon the subject, with discussions of the economical questions con nected with American wool-industry. It contains, besides, essays by Mr. George William Bond. Several of the most recent reports of State boards of agriculture contain essays of much value, particularly those of the States of Maine, Vermont, and Georgia. The reports of the National Department occupy the first position as sources of knowl edge on the subject of sheep-husbandry. r£sum£ of wool-production. Messrs. Helmuth, Schwartze, & Co., of London, in their annual report dated January 18, 1877, say as follows: “ An attempt is made in the following to give a survey of the wool- trade in its largest proportions. Usually the view is confined to one market or to one country, or to colonial- or home-grown wools, as the case may be. Here, however, the circle is expanded to include all wools and all countries, as far as information reaches or even as data exist upon which reasonable guesses may be based. To arrive at such a view, the most obvious way would have been an inquiry into the total quantity of wool produced in the world. But, though we give an estimate of the number of sheep in existence, the figures are in several points too uncertain to allow of any conclusions being built upon them. It is nevertheless possible to obtain a view of the trade in its entirety in another way, viz., by ascertaining not the pro duction of wool which takes place all over the globe, but the quantity worked up by the whole wool-industry, which, so far from being distributed over the whole earth, is in a developed form practically confined to Europe and North America. This has accordingly been done. Europe and North America are the manufacturers for the whole world; and, if the extent of their work can be gauged, an idea is really given of the entire trade. The subject resolves itself into an inquiry, first, of the home-production of these two continents, and