Prices of Live Stock. 



125 



instances. Of the sheep recorded as entering the 21 markets 

 of Great Britain very few comparatively are reported to have 

 been weighed, and in a still smaller proportion of cases are 

 prices quoted in respect of those passing over the weigh- 

 bridge. In swine there is a great increase in the numbers 

 reported as marketed in the scheduled places, but the returns 

 of weight and of prices are still too defective to form a basis 

 for satisfactory averages of current values. Reports as 

 regards live weight prices of swine came only from four 

 places. 



Cattle prices were supplied from seventeen of the twenty- 

 one scheduled towns. There was an entire absence of quota- 

 tion of prices from Ashford, Norwich, Salford, and Wakefield, 

 and a very small number only were returned from Birming- 

 ham, Bristol, Lincoln, and York. There are now fifteen 

 English towns named as returning centres under the Act of 

 1 89 1, and it is in these markets rather than in Scotland — 

 where the extent of weighing is always much greater — that 

 . the increase in cattle returned is shown in the first quarter of 

 the present year. The 4,332 weighed and priced in England 

 in the first three months of 1897, have been brought up to 

 7,394 in the same months of 1898, the largest factor in this 

 increase being 2,549 transactions in the auction marts of 

 Carlisle not formerly included. Nevertheless, only 3I per 

 cent, of the cattle shown in England are recorded as having 

 been weighed and priced, and nearly five-sixths of these 

 cases were reported from the four markets of Carlisle, Liver- 

 pool, London, and Shrewsbury alone. At the latter place the 

 transactions were, contrary to the practice elsewhere, mainly 

 those in store stock. On the other hand, in Scotland, at the 

 six scheduled places, 16,274 head of cattle were weighed and 

 priced ; Aberdeen, Edinburgh, and Dundee sending the most 

 complete records. The total percentage of cattle reported to 

 have been weighed and priced in Scotland was over 25 per 

 cent, of the animals exhibited. 



Adding to the towns which have been formerly selected as 

 giving price quotations worthy of special record the two new 

 returning markets, the following further table gives for twelve 



