The aim and purpose of the Author in publishing this work is to convey in simple, unpretentious language, practical and correct information upon the opening, development, and present status of the Live Stock Trade of the great New West; and to put into existence, he believes, the first and only work devoted exclusively to a plain exposition of the manner of growing and marketing common live stock. and the modes of preparation of the various articles of Product, made therefrom; with brief historic sketches of leading and characteristic men of the present day engaged in the business.

     No claim or presence whatever is made to literary merit, or even correct language and syntax. It has been the Author's lot in his brief life, to do, to act, and not to write. With a deep conviction that in the work a hundred errors and imperfections exist to each single merit, it is diffidently submitted to the reading, but not to the critic world.