mate, but more to
causes already assigned. If ever a land was characterized justly, as
"flowing with milk and honey," it is Illinois and the adjacent States.
From the springing of the grass till September, butter is made in great
profusion. It sells at that season in market for about ten cents. With
proper care it can be preserved in tolerable sweetness for winter's
use. Late in autumn and early in the winter, sometimes butter is not
plenty. The feed becomes dry, the cows range further off, and do not
come up readily for milking, and dry up. A very little trouble would
enable a farmer to keep three or four good cows in fresh milk at the
season most needed.

Cheese is made by many families, especially in the counties bordering on
the Illinois river. Good cheese sells for eight and sometimes ten cents,
and finds a ready market.

_Swine._ This species of stock may be called a staple in the provision
of Illinois. Thousands of hogs are raised without any expense, except a
few breeders to start with, and a little attention in hunting them on
the range, and keeping them tame.

Pork that is made in a domestic way and fatted on corn, will sell from
three to four and five dollars, according to size, quality, and the time
when it is delivered. With a pasture of clover or blue grass, a
well-filled corn crib, a dairy, and slop barrel, and the usual care that
a New Englander bestows on his pigs, pork may be raised from the sow,
fatted, and killed, and weigh from two hundred to two hundred and fifty,
within twelve months; and this method of raising pork would be
profitable.

Few families in the west and south put up their pork in salt pickle.
Their method is to salt it sufficiently to prepare it for smoking, and
then make bacon of hams, shoulders, and middlings or broadsides. The
price of bacon, taking the hog round, is about seven and eight cents.
Good hams command eight and ten cents in the St. Louis market. Stock
hogs, weighing from sixty to one hundred pounds, alive, usually sell
from one to two dollars per head. Families consume much more meat in the
West in proportion to numbers, than in the old States.

_Sheep_ do very well in this country, especially in the older
settlements, where the grass has become short, and they are less
molested by wolves.

_Poultry_ is raised in great profusion,--and large numbers of fowls
taken to market.

Ducks, geese, swans, and many other aquatic birds, visit our waters in
the spring. The