8o Large and Small Holdings 



11,000,000 acres in 1876 to 13,400,000 acres in 1902, and 13,900,000 

 acres in loxxp 1 , compensating for the decreased arable area. At the 

 same time the number of cattle kept increased from an average of 

 4,075,520 between 1876 and 1880 to 4,611,937 in 1902 and 5,100,145 

 in 1909*. Nor do these figures by any means express the total 

 increase in the production of meat during those years. For the 

 average weight of the living animal was very much increased, and 

 also the fattening was done more quickly than had been the case pre- 

 viously ; so that even if the yearly average of numbers had remained 

 stationary, the production would really have been much greater than 

 it had been thirty years earlier 8 . The number of horses kept had 

 increased by more than 150,000 in 1909 as compared with the average 

 of the years 1876 to 1880. The number of pigs remained more or 

 less stationary up till the years when swine-fever raged, but showed 

 some tendency to increase, especially when the danger of fever had 

 been reduced. Sheep-farming did indeed experience a set-back. 

 But, as Mr Rew has shown 4 , this was small in comparison with the 

 set-back experienced in other European countries ; and in this case 

 too it is to be remembered that great improvements in feeding were 

 made, and partly compensated for the decreased numbers. 



Feeding was however far from being the only matter in which 

 progress was made in the technique of stock-farming. Breeding in 

 particular was greatly improved, as was indeed necessitated by the 

 growing demand for meat of the best quality 5 . Whereas "in the 

 days of prosperity," that is to say in the period of high corn-prices, 

 farmers were said to have been " singularly ignorant or careless of the 

 value of pedigree 6 " ; now the breeding of herd-book stock became a 

 more and more flourishing art, till English cattle-breeding was as 

 much admired as English corn-growing had been at an earlier period. 

 Nor was it directed merely to providing first-class meat for the home 

 market. A demand for English pedigree cattle came from the great 

 herds abroad which were producing for the European market ; and as 

 these countries were not suited for such breeding, the export trade to 

 Canada, South America, the United States and elsewhere became an 



1 Agricultural Statistics, 1903, loc. cit. and 1909, Pt. I. 

 a Ibid. 



* R. H. Rew, Recent Changes in the number of Cattle and Sheep in Great Britain, in 

 Journal of the Farmers' Club, 1903, pp. 45 f. 



* Ibid., p. 46. 



* A. T. Matthews, Tenant Farmers as Breeders of Pedigree Stock, in Journal of the Bath 

 and West and Southern Counties Society, 1903, p. 10. 



* Ibid., p. 3. 



