As;ricnltiiral Statistics 



75 



proportion of their total stock to tlie numljer of tlieir 

 population — Belgium being, as compared with the 

 United Kingdom, as 50 to 130, our inferior number of 

 cattle being made up by the superior number of sheep. 

 (On these tables Professor Rogers of Oxford, lias con- 

 structed a theory that the number of live stock in Great 

 Britain is decreasing, in consequence of the tendency 

 of small fanns to be amalgamated into large ones. All 

 existing evidence is opposed to this theory, and is in 

 favour of the assumption that there is a steady increase 

 in the quantity of live meat produced on every acre of 

 land occupied for farming and grazing in the three 

 kingdoms — more especially in Scotland and England, 

 the countries of large farms. Indeed, a very little 

 consideration will shew that the naked figures of 

 these comparative tables give the least possible infor- 

 mation of any useful kind. Thus Ireland, from its 

 moist climate, is essentially a grass country: indeed, it 

 is now often called "the natural home of the short- 

 horn, " the most profitable meat-producing breed in 

 the world. Within the recollection of middle-aged 

 men of the present generation, the cattle of Ireland 

 were of the unprofitable, slow-growing, long-horned, 

 thick-skinned breed. These have been superseded, on 

 nearly all but high mountain ranges and the poorest 

 wastes, by the shorthorn and its crosses. In nearly 

 all the grazing counties of Ireland, for the last twenty 

 years, the long-horns were year after year turned into 

 oxen and exported, the breeders resorting to imported 

 shorthorn bulls only. The steady sale of lean stock 

 to English graziers assisted the change. The conse- 

 quence is, that not only is Ireland stocked with the 

 modem breed, but it has become the country on which 

 English graziers chiefly rely for the young stock, 

 technically "stores," which they grow into beef. 



Now, if we were to judge only from figures, we 

 should decide that Irleand was better supplied with 

 live stock than Scotland, and was even better 

 farmed, while the exact reverse is the fact. Scotland 

 has vei-y little beef-feeding pasture as compared with 

 Ireland — although Scotch turnips are the very best 

 in the world — but what she has is grazed by the choicest 

 beef-makers. All her good land is well stocked ; 

 but an enormous per-centage of the acreage of Scotland 

 is irreclaimable waste. The primest joints of metro- 

 politan markets are of Scotch beef. Valleys and 

 moorland and mountain top, that fonnerly fed such 

 half-starved wild cattle as Rob Roy " lifted," are now 

 more profitably given up to sheep — Cheviots and 

 blackfaces, both migrants from England. Again, 

 since easy conveyance and good markets, with the 

 spread of root cultivation, have led the Scotch to 

 fatten a great number of their beeves at home on 

 turnips, English graziers have been obliged to look 

 more to Ireland for their supply of store cattle, horned 

 manure makers, and consumers of root-crops ; while, 

 until the outbreak of the Ruiderpesf, not only did 

 the dairies of the metropolis depend largely on Holland 

 for milch cows, but Norfolk and other feeding counties 

 began to draw " stores " from the Continent. On the 



other hand, neither the climate nor the f^-^nius of 

 the Iiish jieople is so well suited to the growth of 

 sheep, although there is no doubt that whenever 

 Ireland becomes really tranquil, the number of long- 

 woolled sheep — than which no animal is more pro- 

 fitable — suited to the climate will be largely increased. 

 The peasant-farmers of Ireland contributed next to 

 nothing to the stock of beef-producing animals, and 

 nothing to that of mutton. The export to England is 

 drawn from the gi'eat farms of the grazing districts. 



The comparisons of the number of cattle and sheep 

 in Great Britain and in France or Germany are, to say 

 the least, very unprofitable, because the first elements 

 of comparison are wanting. It is like the early 

 Japanese trade of exchanging gold for silver by 

 weight. In France, for instance, in 1862, there were 

 nearly 6,000,000 cows and 8,000,000 of other cattle, 

 14,000,000 in all, for a population of 37,000,000 ; 

 while Great Britain, with not quite 5,000,000 cattle, 

 had a population of over 23,000,000 to feed. Yet 

 meat .(much more largely eaten by the English than 

 by the French) is not dearer in England than in 

 France, where the best cuts of horseflesh fetch 5d. 

 a pound. The reason of this great power of meat con- 

 sumption in Great Britain is to be found in the fact 

 that we grow meat, while in France and Germany, 

 with the exception of limited areas which grow beef 

 for England and Paris, they allow skin, bone, meat, 

 and muscle to exist for the pur^oose of the dairy or 

 harness, or both combined. 



It may be assumed that every head of horned stock 

 included in our statistical returns is either a dairy cow 

 or a beef-making animal, and that on an average it 

 produces twice as much of the best joints of beef as the 

 French animal, because it comes to the butcher at half 

 the age, and fattened, thanks to root and cake, 

 on one-fourth of the area. Normandy and Brittany 

 have recently sent us a few shorthorn crosses, equal to 

 those from Warwickshire or Yorkshire. The balance 

 in weight and quality of British sheep and pigs, 

 taking early maturity into consideration, is still 

 greater. We have no doubt that the ordinaiy culti- 

 vated acreage of England and Scotland produces four 

 times as much beef, mutton and pork annually as the 

 same acreage in France or Germany, excepting always 

 the exceptionally well-cultivated farms in Prussia, 

 equal to, and exceeding in extent, our greatest west 

 Norfolk farms. We have it on the high authority 

 of M. Le Play, the Chief Commissioner of the 

 French Exhibition that the efforts of the French Go- 

 vernment, carried out most judiciously for more than 

 forty years, to improve the meat-making live stock of 

 France, have proved, as far as the peasant proprietor is 

 concerned, of no more effect than "water poured 

 on sand." The peasant proprietor cannot afford to 

 buy, nor to feed, nor to use a beef-making beast ; he 

 wants muscle, not flesh. As for sheep, he has neitiicr 

 the space for a crop of roots, nor tlie money nor the 

 inclination to find the essential com or cake for winter 

 food. 



