126 



Prices of Live Stock. 



scheduled places, and a falling off in the returns of weight 

 and prices which are still too small to form a basis for 

 satisfactory averages of current values. 



In the general table on page 129 it will be observed 

 that reports as regards live w^eight prices of swine came only 

 from four places. Reports giving prices of sheep came from 

 ten of the nineteen markets. Cattle prices were supplied from 

 sixteen of these scheduled towns. No quotation of prices was 

 received from either Ashford, Bristol, or Wakefield, and only 

 a very small number from Birmingham, Lincoln, or York. 

 The use of the w^eighbridge remains much less popular in 

 England than in Scotland, w^here the practice of selling in 

 auction marts generally prevails. The reports as regards 

 cattle from the fourteen English towns named in the Act 

 of 1 89 1 compare as follows for the first quarter of the 

 present and tw^o preceding years. 



Cattle at Scheduled Places in 

 England. 



1st 

 Quarter, 

 1897. 



1st 

 Quirter, 

 1896. 



1st 

 Quarter, 

 1895. 



Number entering markels 

 Number weighed 



Prices returned wi h quality dis'in- 

 guished 



196,039 

 6,333 

 4332 



201,403 210,777 

 6,992 1 6,237 

 4,747 3,709 



i 



1 



Thus only per cent, of the cattle shown in England 

 are recorded as having been weighed, and two-thirds of these 

 cases were reported by London and Liverpool alone. On 

 the other hand, in Scotland at no one of the five scheduled 

 places w^ere less than a thousand head of cattle weighed 

 in the three months, while upwards of 6,500 w^ere weighed in 

 Edinburgh and over 7,000 at Aberdeen. Prices were quoted 

 also for every animal weighed at Aberdeen and in nearly 

 every case at Dundee. The price quotations furnished from 

 Edinburgh and Perth are relatively somcAvhat defective 

 in their details. The reports from Glasgow^ are still 

 inferior to those from other Scottish towns, but they show 

 some improvement compared with the first three months 

 of 1896. The following table shows that the total per- 

 centage of cattle reported to have been weighed in Scot- 

 land was nearly ten times as great as in England, or 



