828 REPORT— 1900. 



to an enormous population, and the extension or retrogression of such crops 

 deserves some of the attention of the agricultural statistician. Tea, coffee, wine, 

 spirits, and beer are, it is not to be forgotten, agricultural products in one clime or 

 another, either directly or indirectly ; and crops so important as sugar or tobacco 

 •are almost to be classed as necessaries of existence. Of yearly growing importance 

 is it also, in these days, when the animal portion of our food supply bulks so much 

 more fully than before in the daily rations of populations as they grow in wealth 

 and increase in consumptive power, that we should closely follow the fluctuations 

 in the live stock maintained for food and learn the teaching of the agricultural 

 returns on the manufacture of beef, of mutton, of pig meat, or of milk. 



The growing requireicents of our 40,000,000 of population in this country — 

 dependent for a large proportion of their meat on cattle, sheep, and swine fed in 

 other lands and in some of the most distant countries of the globe — have pro- 

 voked a series of enquiries into the extent of our domestic production and the 

 density of the herds and flocks maintained on like areas of the surface of the other 

 and different regions. 



It is half a century since Sir James Caird, in calling the attention of farmers 

 to what he foresaw was the certain growth of the demand for butcher's meat, for 

 milk, and for butter in the United Kingdom, argued that as the expenditure of 

 the lower classes increased the development of household outlay with increasing 

 means would necessarily take this direction. Venturing a little beyond the safe 

 ground of statistical deduction as to what was forthcoming from our own stock, 

 it is true he prophesied that it would not be found practicable to import fresh 

 provisions coming from distant countries, and he therefore suggested that the 

 enterprising home producer would have the full market here practically at his own 

 <.ommand. The same authority repeated in 18GS his advice as to the direction 

 the development of agriculture here might take, placing the exteiit of the reliance 

 of the British consumer on the foreigner at only one-ninth part of his supply of 

 meat, and one-fifth of his consumption of butter and of cheese. That these ratios 

 have altered since, to the detriment of the producer, if to the benefit of the con- 

 sumer, assuredly does not render the need of statistical enquiry into meat and milk 

 production less urgent than it was as a most important factor in the nation's food 

 supply. 



Sixteen years ago, when this Association met at Montreal, I ventured to lay 

 before this Section some data on the nature and extent of our meat supplies and 

 the scale of our production, based in the latter case mainly on the very practical 

 investigation of a former President of the Royal Agricultural Society — Sir H. M. 

 Thompson — but adapted to the data of the current agricultural returns of live 

 stock. For numerous purposes the formula I then employed has since been 

 followed as convenient for serial comparisons of annual results in the statistics 

 founded on reports by lloyal Commissions and Parliamentary Committees. But 

 no student of statistics will contend that the conditions of agricultural production 

 are ever absolutely permanent, and I have seen there are not wanting opinions 

 that it may be needful, from one cause or another, to revise the scales of the calcu- 

 lation, and to compare the most recent rate of meat production in this country 

 with that of other lands. 



Few subjects seem to me to possess more practical interest for those willing to 

 aid in statistical research, competent to apply to the numerical data a cor- 

 responding knowledge of the development of stock-feeding in recent years and in 

 different countries. I commend a re-investigation of this subject — and the kin- 

 dred one of milk production and the manufacture of dairy produce in this country 

 and abroad — on the lines in the one case of the inquiry of 1871, and in the other 

 on the lines which Mr. Rew suggested in a paper in 1892 to the Royal Statistical 

 Society — to the best attention of a younger generation of estimators. Whether and 

 how far the earlier maturity of our present breeds of sheep and cattle and swine 

 has resulted in the production of a larger annual volume of meat is a factor 

 which should have careful consideration, and if a careful inquiry should suggest 

 the time for revision has arrived respecting the G7 tons of beef, the 12^ tons of 

 pauttoii, or the 69|- tons of pig meat I and others have hitherto used fts the e(jui- 



