cover the valleys, and are occupied by thousands of sheep and cattle, under the care of "herders," who stay with them constantly. In 1863, there were 3,000,000 sheep in California, since which the flocks have increased immensely. The number of horses in this State advanced in ten years from 27,719 to 160,610. Cattle have increased in proportion; and in every class of domestic animals are included some of the best-blooded stock in the world.

In the United States, in 1860, we numbered 87,000,483 useful live animals, estimated at $1,089,329,915. Our immense grazing-fields are therefore easily converted into wealth, in the form of wool, hides, butter, cheese, &c. This resource of the United States is capable of indefinite increase.

Our vast surplus of Indian corn is easily converted into ready money by fattening our herds of swine. Exact estimates here are difficult; but it is approximately true to say, that, in the year of the last census, some 3,000,000 were slaughtered, their estimated value being $35,000,000. To this sum add $15,000,000, the cost of packing and transportation, and this one department of trade reaches $50,000,000; while the value of all the animals slaughtered in the United States in 1860 amounted to $213,000,000.

The products of the great Southern staples deserve special mention. Cotton, spinning-jennies, and Whitney's cottongin, connect us with the largest industries of the world. In 1820, we produced 430,000 bales of cotton; in 1850, 2,755,257 bales; in 1860, 4,675,770 bales, or 2,104,096,500 pounds. The cash value of this product, from 1850 to 1855, amounted to $491,477,517.

MANUFACTURES AND MACHINES.

We are not professedly a manufacturing people. The country is too large, there are too many departments of productive industry, and labor is too high. Our citizens are, moreover, too much averse to routine and fixed posi

tions to make the best use of their mechanical powers. In Europe, restrictions to certain trades amount almost to caste, and in Asia quite. The father's employment becomes that of the son, and so on, generation after generation. The boy sees little but his father's trade, knows little else. He begins to learn it by observation as soon as he is capable of intelligent perception. He grows up with fellow-craftsmen, hears hardly any thing else, and, at a lawful age, sits down to his seven-years' trade as a matter of course. in this way turned into one vast workshop. the great skill in manufacturing costly fabrics acquired in France, Belgium, Germany, and Thibet.

England is Hence, also,

But it is quite otherwise in America. Here, if the boy does not like the trade of his father (and he is pretty sure not to like it), he immediately looks for something else; and hereditary skill and experience are very generally lost. If he does not take a fancy to the occupation he has chosen, he dashes off, and tries something else. Then there is a species of personal ambition and pride which is quite American; and, though it may lead to good results in some instances, it is very likely to be injurious. Every child expects to rise higher than his parents. He knows he has better opportunities for education. He wishes a more elevated, or at least a more lucrative, employment. He has no idea, therefore, of settling down on the old homestead, and making a life-drudgery of his father's trade. He will be off for the West, or to the city, or to the gold-fields of California. He has an idea that he may be in the Legislature or Congress yet; that he shall come back, a governor or president, to visit his parents, and confer honor upon them in their old age. At least, he expects to become a great merchant and a millionnaire, a lawyer, minister, doctor, school-teacher, or politician, and in some way rise to distinction and usefulness, or, at the very worst, get his living by his wits.

Now, these changing, experimenting, rushing tendencies produce a few great men, but many more failures. They

give vigor and rapidity of development to the nation, but, it may be feared, at the expense of solid virtue and patient perfection. If a hundred to one of our young men would be content with the avocations of honest industry to which they are suited, there would be much more stability and happiness, and a much stronger development of the mind and heart and wealth of the nation.

It

But, at all events, it may be asked, "How are a large relative number of splendid mechanics and a manufacturing people to be made of our hot-brained American youth?" may be fairly answered, that this is impossible. But there will, nevertheless, be a real and considerable success from American genius and tact, and an ample accession of trained artisans from abroad. So far has this providential arrangement for compensation proceeded, as to make our past highly respectable, and to render all necessary independ ence certain in the future.

The manufacture of cotton fabrics in the United States has increased rapidly. New England, in 1860, employed 3,959,297 spindles, using 237,844,854 pounds of cotton, producing goods valued at $80,301,535; the Middle States, 861,661 spindles, 75,055,666 pounds, value of goods, $26,272,111; in the remaining States, this class of fabrics manufactured amounted to $8,564,280. In the whole country, we employed that year 45,315 males and 73,605 females, making 118,920 operatives; an increase of 20,964 in ten years. The value of our cotton manufactures for the year was $115,137,926; an advance of 76 per cent since 1850.

In the manufacture of woollen and mixed goods, in 1860, we employed a capital of $35,520,527; 28,780 males, and 20,120 females; 639,700 spindles, and 16,075 looms, working up 80,000,000 pounds of wool, with 16,008,625 of cotton. The value of the raw material was $40,360,300; and of the manufactured goods, $68,865,963; an increase of fifty-one per cent in ten years.

"The total value of domestic manufactures (including fisheries and the products of the mines), according to the census of 1850, was $1,109,106,616. The product of the same branches for the year ending June 1, 1860," would reach "an aggregrate value of nineteen hundred millions of dollars; an increase of more than eighty-six per cent in ten years, exceeding the increase of even the white population by a hundred and twenty-three per cent."

Our various manufactories have thus given " employment to about 1,100,000 men and 285,000 women, or 1,385,000 persons; and direct support to 4,847,500 persons, or nearly one-sixth of the entire population."

These facts exalt our manufacturing interests, far above the popular estimate, to the first rank of importance among the industries of the country.

Extensive manufactures carry with them a large amount of machine-making. Our ample steam and water power are made extensively available by our skilful machinists for the production of enormous wealth. "The construction of hydraulic machinery, of stationary and locomotive steamengines, and all the machinery used in mines, mills, furnaces, forges, and factories, in the building of roads, bridges, canals, railways, &c., and for all other purposes of the engineer and manufacturer," produced returns from "machinists' and millwrights' establishments, in 1850, amounting to $27,998,344; and in 1860, not including the sewingmachine, to $47,118,550."

The proud distinction of inventing the sewing-machine belongs to America. It is an invention of the greatest practical importance. "It has opened avenues to profitable and healthful industry for thousands of industrious females, to whom the labors of the needle had become wholly unremunerative, and injurious in their effects." The manufacture and sale of the machines has become a lucrative business. In 1860, in nine States, 116,330 machines were made, worth $5,605,345. In 1861, we exported machines to the amount of over $61,000.

The value of clothing made in twelve States and the District of Columbia rose, chiefly by the power of this invaluable machine, from $43,678,802 in 1850 to $64,002,975 in 1860; an increase of $20,324,173, or seventy-three per cent, in ten years.

The rapid progress of the Americans in the invention of labor-saving machines, largely employed in the various departments of husbandry, is worthy of special attention.

Though the honor of inventing and bringing first to practical use the threshing-machine belongs fairly to the Scotchmen Michael Menzies and Andrew Meikle, the idea soon thoroughly seized the practical American mind. In 1833, a strange instrument, invented by Obed Hussey of Ohio, it was said, "cradled wheat as fast as eight persons could bind it." Within the brief period which has since elapsed, inventions and improvements in machinery have wrought a complete revolution in the despatch and economy of farming in America. Fairs and exhibitions have greatly stimulated the spirit of invention; and "the Great Exhibition of 1851" placed American implements for farming uses at the head of the world.

In 1850, the value of our manufactures in this department amounted to $6,842,611. In 1860, the amount rose to $17,802,514; an increase of one hundred and sixty per

cent.

The value of agricultural implements employed in the United States in 1860 reached $246,118,141. You may add for wagons, carts, and wheelbarrows, $11,796,991; making an aggregate of $257,915,132. Cotton-gins, hoes, shovels, spades, and forks, are omitted.

PRECIOUS METALS.

"On the nineteenth day of January, 1848, ten days before the treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo, James W. Marshall, while engaged in digging a race for a sawmill at Caloma, about