averaging over two hundred pounds each, two others placing them on the blocks for that purpose. All these hogs were weighed singly, on one pair of scales, in the course of eleven hours. Another hand trimmed the hams-seventeen hundred hams-in Cincinnati style, as fast as they were separated from the carcasses. The hogs were thus cut up and disposed of at the rate of more than one to the minute. A still greater feat has since been performed by two men, under the same circumstances as narrated above, cutting up twelve hundred and forty-seven hogs in fourteen hours. None but a pork packer can fully appreciate this achievement, and few pork packers would believe it was ever accomplished.

The value of these manufacturing operations to Cincinnati consists in the vast amount of labor they require and compensate, and the circumstance that the great mass of that labor furnishes employment to thousands at the very season when their regular avocations cannot be pursued. Thus there are, perhaps, fifteen hundred coopers, in and outside of the city, making lard kegs, pork barrels, and bacon hogsheads; the city coopers being employed at a period when they are not needed on stock barrels and other cooperage, and the country coopers, whose main occupation is farming, during a season when the farms require no labor at their hands. Then there is another large body of hands, also agriculturists at the proper season, who are engaged in getting out staves and heading and cutting hoop poles for the same business. Great quantities of boxes, of various descriptions, are made for packing bacon especially for the English markets. Lard, also, is packed to a great extent in tin boxes or cans, the making of which furnishes occupation to tin-plate workers.

If we take into view, further, that the slaughtering, the wagoning, the porkhouse labor, the rendering of lard and grease, and the lard oil, the stearine, and the soap and candle products, bristle and curled hair dressing, and other kindred employments, supply abundant employment to men who in the spring and summer are engaged in the manufacture and hauling of bricks, quarrying and hauling stone, cellar digging and walling, bricklaying, plastering, and street paving, with other employments, which in their very nature cease when winter approaches, we can readily appreciate the importance of a business which supplies labor to probably fifteen thousand individuals, who but for its existence would be carning little or nothing one-third of the year.

I have referred to the remarkable fact, that there was a period in the west when corn would not, in some sections, command six cents per bushel, and in others was of so little value as to be substituted for wood as fuel. Not less extraordinary is the fact, within the knowledge of hundreds now in Cincinnati, that in the early ages of pork packing, say in 1828, there was so little demand for any portion of the hog, other than hams, shoulders, sides and lard, that the heads, spare-ribs, neck pieces, back-bones, &c., were regularly thrown into the Ohio river to get rid of them!

A more distinct impression will be given of the slaughtering and packing of hogs by a statement of these operations, as witnessed by the writer at a recently erected establishment in Cincinnati, which has introduced some novelties and improvements in the business.

Slaughtering requires forty to fifty hands, distributed as follows: One pen boss, to count in and take proper care of the hogs while in the pens; two hands to drive up and fill knocking-down pens; one to knock down; one to stick; one to scald; one to work lever and throw hogs out of the tub; four to scrape off hair; six to shave off remaining particles of hair; two to gambril; one to wash down; one to gut; two to separate the fat from the intestines; one to cleanse the fat from blood, dirt, &c.; two to secure pluck fat and cut pizzle-strings; one to wash out hogs after being gutted; two to dry-shave; two to run off hogs; two to catch off of travelling hooks and run back on slides; one tank-man and helper; one lard drawer; one steam-tub man, and one engineer; being, in this instance, forty-five hands.

There are fifteen slaughtering houses the present season, one of which alone slaughtered sixty thousand hogs.

By the new method of disposing of hogs after they leave the dressing table, the animal is gambrelled and swung off the end of the table, being supported by a hook attached to a grooved roll or sheave, which revolves on the edge of an iron bar, popularly called the railroad. The hog being now suspended by his hind legs, falls into the hands of the gutter, an expert performing the operation of stripping the carcasses at the rate of one hundred and eighty to the hour. The inside of the hog is next thoroughly cleansed of blood by the application of water from a hose-pipe. The dry-shaver next takes him in hand, removing all hair overlooked at the table. By means of the railroad extending through the dry-room, the hog is then run off to any desired point instead of hanging on stationary hooks, as under the old system. Joists are bolted to timbers above, with cleats or rests spiked on the lower face; these joists are suspended in straight lines, and have a uniform space of twenty-five inches, the usual length of the gambrel. The hog is next transferred from the travelling-hook to the rests by means of a lever, having its fulcrum on the rests, the ends of the gambrel-stick being supported by the rests or cleats. The hog is then run forward in a direct line with but little effort, and left hanging until the animal heat is entirely expelled, when he is ready for the block to be cut up into any desired style. The feet and tongues of hogs are put up in spiced pickle and sold at the south. The blood is the only part of the hog which runs to waste. The bristles are plucked from the carcass as it comes from the scalding-tub, separated in color and quality, packed in barrels, and sent to establishments which clean and dress them for market. The hair, after receiving certain treatment, becomes the curled hair used at the east for sofas, mattresses, cushions, &c. The plucks of the hogs are collected by one party, who, by a patented process, subjects them, with all other species of animal oflal incidental to slaughter-houses, to hydraulic pressure, thereby expelling all moisture; and after drying them artificially, they are made ready in twenty-four hours for grinding up into manure. This species of fertilizer is packed in barrels, large quantities being shipped to the east.

The heads, gut-fat, and rough trimmings are put into iron tanks, to which steam is applied, the fatty portion of the contents, after eight hours' cooking, being drawn off into casks and sold as head and gut lard.

Cincinnati kettle-rendered lard is exclusively the product of the leaf of the hog; that is, the collection of fat surrounding the kidneys and adhering to the sides, the only legitimate portion fit for culinary purposes.

The hams of late years, with our city packers, are almost invariably sugarpickled, being placed in tight hogsheads, and pickle, in due proportions of salt, molasses, saltpetre, &c., poured over them. During the process of cure they are frequently overhauled, so as to insure every portion coming under the action of the brine. After remaining in pickle a sufficient period to determine their cure, they are hung in smoke and afterwards covered with canvass to protect them from the fly, and are then packed in tierces ready for market.

The shoulders are almost entirely cured in dry salt, a small share making barrelled meat, rating as prime and prime mess pork, for both of which there is but a limited demand.

The sides of the heavier class of hogs are mostly cut into four or more pieces at the block, and packed in barrels as mess pork.

Shoulders and sides, however, enter more largely into consumption as bacon, the latter designated as rib, clear rib, and clear clear rib having the back-bone sawed out, and clear being free of both back-bone and ribs. The latter two are most in request, and rib bacon is but little called for. The ratio of fully cured products of shoulders, sides, hams, and lard, will bear the following proportions, varied somewhat by the condition of hogs and style of cutting: Shoulders, 15 per cent.; sides, 40; hams, 13; lard, 12; heads, offal, and shrinkage in curing, 20 per cent.

Owing in a great measure to the prevalence of an epidemic called hog cholera, which has been more or less destructive throughout the west, the old method of feeding hogs in large droves has been abandoned, and they are now fattened in comparatively small lots by the farmers, and in season are collected by drivers and marketed usually by railroads.

A statement of the business of one of our manufacturing houses most extensively engaged in the production of lard oil, star and tallow candles, soap, &c., will afford an impressive view of the extent and magnitude of these operations. This firm has, in a single year, made star and tallow candles, soap, lard oil, oleine oil, glycerine, &c., exceeding a value of two million of dollars. They are regularly filling orders, from California and elsewhere, of five thousand to ten thousand boxes each of soap and star candles, the first of sixty pounds and the second of thirty-five pounds to the box. They use up of raw materials, thirtysix hundred barrels of rosin, one thousand tons of soda ash, thirty thousand pounds of candle wick, twenty hundred carboys of sulphuric acid, and five thousand barrels of tallow annually; and their consumption of lard, on an average, equals seven hundred and fifty tierces, three hundred pounds each, per week, for two hundred and eighty days of the year.

The introduction of petroleum, or coal oil, has, of course, greatly checked the use of lard oil, both for lubricating and illuminating purposes, and but for the increasing demand for lard as the basis of stearine and soap oils, as well as for other uses, must finally have effected a marked decrease in the value of the article. The product of petroleum for the year 1866, added to the stock in market left over from 1865, was 2,850,000 barrels; of this there was consumed at home 1,066,666, and abroad 1,050,000 barrels, leaving a surplus at home and abroad of 773,334 barrels. These 2,116,667 barrels were equal to 84,666,680 gallons. The average price of the coal oil sold in 1866 was forty-one cents per gallon. The corresponding supply of sperm oil was 36,663 barrels, or 1,466,520 gallons, at two dollars and fifty-five cents per gallon, and 108,000 barrels, or 4,320,000 gallons of lard oil, at one dollar and sixty cents per gallon. With the immense and yearly increasing supply, and the low figures at which it sells, and the great superiority, either as a lubricator or illuminator, of petroleum over these competitive articles, the sale of lard oil and whale oil must soon be confined to other and greatly limited purposes. By a recent experiment it was ascertained that one pint of coal oil, costing six cents, fed one coal-oil lamp during six evenings, or for the space of twenty-eight hours, averaging four hours and forty minutes to the evening; two lard-oil lamps having been required for the same service. The cost of the lard oil was four cents per evening, that of the coal oil two cents. The advantage of coal oil in yielding light over sperm oil is no doubt equally great.

The census of 1860, affording the latest table of the number of hogs in the United States, gave it as 33,512,867, exhibiting an annual increase of about 300,000 during the previous decade. As no use can be made of the hog but for food, and the surplus is annually consumed for that purpose, the annual increase is very regular, and the number at the close of 1866 may be safely put down at 35,500,000. This is nearly as many as can be found in the whole of Europe. In the western States, according to the census of 1860, there are one hundred and thirty-four hogs to every one hundred of population; in the southern States the proportion is one hundred and sixty-three to every one hundred. Notwithstanding this disparity, the South not only consumes her increase of hogs, but is the largest purchaser which the West finds, at home or abroad, for her large surplus. To solve this problem is not only out of my power, but I have never found any person who could supply a plausible solution of it. To heighten the difficulty, it must be recollected that the negro in his heretofore slave condition had his meat, as well as other food, measured or weighed out to him daily, and of course the ration was far more likely to fall short of what he could consume than to exceed it.

PISCICULTURE WITH REFERENCE TO AMERICAN

WATERS.

BY THEODORE GILL, M. D.

PISCICULTURE AMONG THE ANCIENTS.

FISHES, from the earliest ages, have been objects of interest to the philosopher as well as to the people at large, and the mystery in which their habits are enshrouded by the element in which they live has rather enhanced the curiosity excited by their appearance, and has lent much of the zest which the sportsman experiences in pursuit of them. As is usual, too, with respect to subjects which are difficult of observation, fable has lent its charms to invest these beings with marvellous properties, both of body and intelligence, and truth and fiction are so mingled in the accounts given of their habits by the ancients, that the two are, in some cases, separable with great difficulty. Yet the ancients were, in truth, perhaps, better acquainted than the moderns with the habits of some fishes; for never has the taste for fish been carried to such extreme, and never has it been gratified at such expense, as in ancient Rome. The exorbitant prices commanded by fishes which fulfilled certain arbitrary requisites as to condition and size, naturally directed to them much attention, and fish ponds were formed at enormous cost, while the fishes destined for them were sought for in distant ports, and transported to the ponds or preserves of Roman senators and noblemen, to be fattened for the table and to propagate their race, and afford a supply of the desired luxury in the finest condition. Pisciculture was indeed carried on in those days with zeal and success, and much could be learned from the experience of that age; but zealous and skilful as were the ancients, the device of transplanting, or artificially fecundating, the ova, and rearing the fishes from the egg, seems to have been totally unknown to them.

PISCICULTURE AND SPAWN COLLECTING IN CHINA.

Fish-raising, for economical as well as ornamental purposes, has been practiced from time immemorial by the Chinese, and the gold fish, so familiar as an ornament of the parlor or drawing-room, will be recalled as one of those species for which we are indebted to that singular people. Sports or monstrosities of the gold fish have been cultivated with great success by them, almost innumerable varieties having been obtained, and eighty-nine have been illustrated by a French naturalist, M. de Savigny, in a special work entitled "Histoire Naturelle des Dorades de la Chine." These rarities well show how much nature can be controlled by man, as forms destitute of certain fins, and possessing others double or even more hypertrophied, have been secured and perpetuated. The experience of a people which have succeeded in such efforts would be interesting as well as instructive, but that hitherto furnished has been too vague. They, however, avail themselves of the fry which have just escaped from the egg, as well as the eggs themselves, and carry on a considerable commerce in both. The most recent writer, Mr. R. Dabry, French consul at Han-Kow, has published some observations on the manner of securing the newly hatched fishes, prefatory to a list of species, of which a translation is here offered. It contains information which may at least prove entertaining, though it is not sufficiently

definite, and is evidently too generalized to be very reliable; but with these precautions, its publication may be of use. The remarks relate principally to the fishes of the Yang-tsze Kiang basin:

"The fishes spawn in the spring, from the fifth of May to the first of June. Each species has its own hole, in which it deposits its eggs. These holes vary in form as well as size, and are from 1.67 to 6.67 metres (about five to twentyone feet) below the surface of the water. To find these holes, fishermen of a peculiar class (Me-yu-ty-jin, that is 'men who touch the fish') dive and seek, by feeling with the hand, for the spots in which the greatest warmth prevails." When such a spot is found, the fry are taken by means of a small net, with very fine meshes, and which is attached to a bamboo hoop, the net being hauled to the surface by means of a string by an assistant. The fry of several species are readily distinguishable. There are others, such as the Houany-yu, Kân-yuky-yu, Yong-yu, Tsin-yu, which cannot be identified till the fish has attained a certain size.

(6

When the fry have been taken from the water they are as soon as possible put into copper vessels, which are then covered with thin cloth. These vessels should be three-quarters filled with water, which is changed three times a daymorning, noon, and evening. While this is being done, a very fine gauze cover is used to prevent the little fishes from escaping from the vessel. Exposure to the sun is to be avoided; the vessel should not be disturbed, and as soon as any of the fishes die, they should be removed.

"The daily food is supplied by the yolks of eggs, which are boiled and mashed up fine. The fishermen advise that the vessel should not be exposed to storms or rain.

"The fish can in this way be kept for two or three months.

"When it is desired to stock a body of water, it is only necessary to place the little fishes in weedy situations, or it will even suffice to throw them in the middle of the water, without any precaution. The fry of each species of fish wanders under the guidance of the mother, who does not abandon her offspring till they are quite large. The fry of the Kia-you' (home or domestic fish') does not wander."

We have also accounts of European travellers, extending as far back as the first half of the last century, from which it would appear that the Chinese had long been accustomed to secure the eggs of various fishes, and that they raised the fishes directly from the egg. Duhalde, a Jesuit father, who published an account of his travels in the year 1735, made known that not far from the town of Kieou-king-fou, in the river Yang-tsze Kiang, very numerous boats came from all quarters in the spring to obtain the spawn of fishes. To secure this spawn, the men devoted to the search for it partially dam the river at certain places, for a distance of nine or ten leagues, with mats and hurdles, leaving only sufficient space for the passage of boats. The spawn is arrested in its descent by these barriers, and thus secured. Much of this spawn is said to be at first undistinguishable by the unaccustomed eye, but those engaged in the fishery readily recognize it, and placing the water containing it in jars, offer it for sale. As may be supposed, it is not certain in all cases what particular fishes the ova thus obtained may give birth to.

RAPID GROWTH OF CHINESE FISHES.

The old traveler, Huc, likewise gives an account of pisciculture as practiced in the southern provinces supplied by Canton, and he gives a very lively narrative of the rapid growth of the fishes raised, and naively remarks that the rapidity

*I thus interpret the vague expression, "les endroits dans lesquels se développe un peu de chaleur."