1868. | On an Kxtraneous Meat-supply. 7 
diminished and it cannot keep,’* and Mr. Latham considers that 
“it will take two or three pounds of Argentine meat zn its usual 
condition to equal in nutritive value one pound of English-fed 
meat.” It must therefore be obvious to every reflecting person, 
that if such meat be exported to England, and arrives here in the 
best condition, the price at which it is offered, say fourpence a 
pound, cannot afford a sufficient inducement to purchasers, who 
would find a better investment for their money in home-grown 
meat at sevenpence or eightpence per pound. There is, however, 
nothing impracticable in the way of feeding-up suitable animals, 
and the land and cattle owners do so for their own use on the farm. 
Mr. Prange writes to ‘The Times’: “I have every year reared a 
small number of oxen for household consumption, and I may safely 
say that their beef is as tender and juicy as the fine joints I dine 
off at this hotel.”+- “ Beef,” he further adds, “from the cattle as 
now reared can be bought in Uruguay at a half-penny per pound ; 
and I shall make a fine business of it, if in a few years I can sell 
6,000 oxen, fattened on my land, at 2d. per pound for the best 
beef.” 
Seldom have words of so encouraging a kind appeared in the 
leading journal, and we have no hesitation in saying that as such 
a result can be attained within four or five weeks’ voyage of our 
shores, the time is not far distant when a large supply of wholesome 
meat will find its way into our markets. As long as there was no 
regular outlet for such beef—it bemg worth in Buenos Ayres less 
than a penny a pound, and employed only as “charqui,” or jerked 
beef for export to Brazil and Havannah for the use of the slave 
population—it was not likely that the breeders would trouble them- 
selves to improve its quality. Soon, however, it will come into 
competition with English preserved meat; and an Estancia has 
just been sold to a German Joint Stock Company established for the 
manufacture of the extract of meat, whilst another has for some 
time been worked by the “Antwerp Liebig’s Meat Extract Com- 
any.” 
i With respect to the improvement in the breed of Cattle, and the 
fattening of stock, there appears to be no difficulty whatever. Mr. 
Latham in his letter to ‘ The Times,’ and in his excellent work on 
the River Plate, has discussed the subject fully and impartially, and 
what he tells us agrees entirely with the statements of the owners 
of large Estancias. For many years past, English bred cattle has 
been imported for the purpose of crossmg with and improving the 
native breeds, and on the better regulated Estancias good cross-bred 
* Mr. G. Bell’s letter to ‘ The Times,’ October 28, 1867; and ‘ The States of the 
River Plate’ (p. 140), by Wilfred Latham. Longmans. 2nd edition. 1868. 
+ Morley’s. 
¢‘ The States of the River Plate,’ pp. 15, 19, 22, 23, 34, 44. 
