TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION F. 829 



Valent of tlie annual production'of 1,000 animals of eacli type respectively I should 

 not be unprepared to make wliatever change is proved needful, despite the re- 

 luctance with which every statistician forsakes, even on good grounds, a basis 

 of conversion which has served without break of continuity for the comparison of 

 more than thirty years. 



How largely the demands of a population like our own have upset the old pro- 

 portions of our reliance on imported meat and imported milk products may be 

 learned from the fact that the latest calculation which I have made suggests a 

 meat consumption of no less than 182 lbs. per head in the United Kingdom, 

 against a little over 100 lbs. thirty years ago, more than two-fifths of the whole 

 now reaching us from foreign countries or British possessions, against the ninth 

 part at which Sir James Caird estimated the foreign quota. 



The mention of these meat estimates suggests a reference, by way of illustration, 

 to the extremely interesting and legitimate application of the important deductions 

 from purely agricultural statistics possible when once the temptation to narrow 

 the question to one of wheat production and wheat supply is resisted, which was 

 made by my colleague, Mr. (Crawford, in a paper read to the Eoyal Statistical 

 Society last winter. The calculations made dealt with the relative dimensions 

 and sources of the food supply of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and 

 Belgium. The deductions made from the data available, and the useful discus- 

 sions thus provoked — including a supplementary memorandum by Mr. Hooker on 

 the relative forces occupied in production under the differing conditions of British 

 and Continental farming— are replete with interest to the future investigator who 

 is willing to face the labour of looking below the surface .either of agricultural 

 statistics or of import or export returns into the economic meaning of the situa- 

 tion thus disclosed. No lesson, perhaps, of this paper is more worthy to be 

 remembered than the warning which it gives to the class of writers who, without 

 a due appreciation of the facts, are as ready, from the vantage-ground of the 

 editorial chair, to fight the battle of the agriculturist for him on paper, as to 

 teach our generals how to handle a British army in the field. 



But for considerations often overlooked, which were on this occasion put 

 forward, the abolition of our dependence on sea-borne produce, it is sometimes 

 argued, could be procured by a simple extension of our own agricultural area. 

 What that extension would have to be it is now shown is sometliing much more 

 serious than many imagine. It is not alone that to fill the gap of our imports 

 of wheat and flour would take another 6,000,000 acres of the prolific quality of 

 our own, but the direct production of the imported meat and dairy produce and of 

 the numerous feeding stuffs required for the manufacture of our present quota of 

 animal food raised at home would at the most modest computation necessitate 

 17,000,000 acres more to be added to our productive area, and that, be it 

 remembered, without withdrawing any portion whatever of our present surface, 

 which, whether under crop or grass, helps to sustain our outturn at the present 

 level. The prospects of a practical annexation of this aggregate of 23,000,000 

 acres to those now under cultivation at home I confess do not seem to me great. 



b*- 



Although the attempt to grasp the relative magnitude of the agricultural 

 production of one State as compared with another, 'or to note the growth or decline 

 of its prominence in the cultivation of particular staples, or the manufacture of 

 particular kinds of human food, is always an enterprise of difficulty in existing 

 statistical conditions, it is one which has fascination for many classes of economists 

 and politicians. If attempted at all it is well to recognise that there are inevitable 

 dangers in the task, and that if any figures are relied on as conclusive their 

 meaning must be interpreted by sooie knowledge of the demographic conditions 

 of each State and its geographical, climatic, and agricultural circumstances. 



Taking a few of the most conspicuous products of the soil, it will generally be 

 found that a very few leading States are so particularly identified with one or 

 other type of production that the examination of their records is therefore 

 available as a guide to the course of a single crop. 



