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THE EVOLUTION OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE

cattle from England. The first bull of their importation was sent to Kentucky in 1785, and in 1817 Colonel Sanders of that State sent to England for twelve head of the best stock that could be bought. Shorthorns were introduced into New York in 1792 and into Massachusetts in 1818. Henry Clay imported Herefords in 1817. Others followed a little later.

In horse breeding, the famous "Messenger," father of the American trotting horse, was brought to Philadelphia from England in 1788, and Justin Morgan (son of True Briton, an imported British horse), was foaled in Massachusetts in 1793, and became the progenitor of the celebrated breed of all-purpose horses known as the "Morgan horses."

The first merino sheep were imported in 1793 and, later, when the Napoleonic wars disrupted a great part of European industry and agriculture, sheep raising became an important industry. There were 5,000 imported merinos in the country by 1809, and in 1813 wool sold at from $2 to $3 a pound.

Hogs multiplied in the frontier settlements and came into greater demand for food as the game was killed off, thus stimulating the production of corn and a greater clearing away of the forests. Cincinnati became an extensive pork packing center and traded, not only with the East, but, after the invention of the steamboat, had extensive commercial relations with Ohio and Mississippi River points as far as New Orleans.

During all this period the people were especially well fed; their energetic stirring of the fertile soil produced an abundance; but opportunity for ex-