TRANSACiTIOXS OF SECTIOIS F. 837 



or twenty-one yeafs' comparison was possible — and these, after all, included the 

 most important and typical wheat-growing communities — the increase would have 

 stood, not at 19, but at 24 per cent., or scarcely below that of the growth of 

 population generally. This result is reached without taking account of any South 

 American figures, where the increase of area is relatively much greater, or of 

 those of India, where the comparison is difficult and the acreage growing but 

 slightly. But, further, it is to be remeaibered that if the comparison of the 

 memorandum were to be continued up to 1899, instead of stopping at 1893, the 

 figui'es would have shown that wheat-growing had apparently made a new start 

 in the five important countries for which the long comparison was possible, as 

 many million acres having been added in the past six years as in the whole pre- 

 ceding twenty — a result which may aff'ord much occasion for suspending our haal 

 judgment and no little warning of the danger of single-year contrasts. 



Since the above calculations were before the Commission there has been an 

 extension of 10,000,000 acres in the official estimates of wheat areas in the United 

 States, and 5,400,000 acres in Kussia, while, although official details are still 

 wanting beyond 1895 for Argentina, nearly 3,000,000 acres more were in that 

 year accounted for in that republic ; and there is an impression, apparently well 

 founded, that by the present time the total may have reached 8,000,000 acres, or 

 nearly five million acres more than the final figure in Sir Robert Giff'en's calcula- 

 tion. If anything like 20,000,000 acres have thus been added to the wheat- 

 growing surface of the globe in the last five or six years, which these further 

 figures suggest, even if no correction be made for the Indian quota, there may 

 be much less difference than was suggested in the memorandum between the growth 

 of population and wheat-growing. 



Without attempting in any way to controvert what was one of the lessons of 

 the memorandum I have bean examining, as to the tendency to increase the 

 numbers of cattle at a ratio above that of population, it has also to be remembered 

 that the apparent 37 per cent, increase there shown between 1873 and 1893 may 

 have to be discounted by subsequent deductions in the United States, in Aus- 

 tralasia, and at the Cape in recent years ; while it is one of the problems I have 

 never yet seen satisfactorily answered, why in almost all old countries except our 

 own the diminution of the stock of sheep seems continuous and remarkable. I 

 mention these matters only, however, to suggest the amount of uncertainty which 

 must attend the efforts to arrive at conclusions, made even by the highest authori- 

 ties, on the only data which exist. If there is, as I have shown, such uncertainty 

 still in the facts on which a conclusion could be built as to the past history of the 

 relative growth of live stock, or of cereal culture and the supply of bread -stufl^s, 

 how much greater must the difficulty be of those who attempt, on the basis of 

 such data, to forecast the course of events for a generation yet to come ! I confess 

 I am not intrepid enough to follow some of the conjectures which have been 

 hazarded on this point, and can only, in concluding this address, recur once more 

 to the prime qualifications for safe statistical deductions with which I opened 

 my remarks — redoubled caution in handling calculations, a very guarded use of 

 data giving records of single and isolated years, and a wise reservation in any 

 prophetic pictures of the future of agricultural production, whether of wheat or 

 cotton, in meat or in wool, of the contingency, alwaj's present, of altered con- 

 ditions which ever and anon in the past have altered and falsified the predictions 

 of earlier observers. 



The following Reports and Paper were read : — 

 1. Report on Future Dealings in Raiu Produce. — See Reports, p. 421. 



2. Report on State Monopolies in other Countries. — See Reports, p. 436. 



