470 Twentij Years' Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 
estimate of an average yearly weight of meat furnished by the 
herds and flocks of the country, as enumerated on each 4th of 
June, must be taken, I need not here remind readers of the 
'Journal ' that this has has often been attempted — by Mr. McCul- 
loch, many years ago, by Sir James Caird, by Mr. J. A. Clarke, 
and by Mr, McDonald, as well as by Sir Henry Thompson in 
the paper already referred to. The full details of the latter 
calculation have formed the basis for many subsequent estimates 
— in particular for a more recent calculation which I submitted 
to the Economic Section of the British Association in 1884, 
The varying circumstances of each season must necessarily 
cause wide fluctuations in the meat marketed in any given 
year, but some mean rate of production must be assumed for 
any comparative enquiry such as this. 
In the present calculation of home produce, I have simply 
used the formula enunciated by Sir Henry Thompson, with a 
very slight modification in the case of the number of sheep 
slaughtered, which I make 40 per cent., in place of 42 per cent. ; 
but their mean weight 70 lb., in place of 60 lb. On this basis 
I represent by the fine line the curve of each year's aggregate 
annual home production (shown, for convenient comparison 
with the population, in cwts.) of beef, mutton, and pig-meat. 
The 26,000,000 cwt. of 1867 is only 26,660,000 cwt, now, and 
the highest out-turn was reached thirteen years ago. Adding 
to this yearly total the figures of our foreign imports, I obtain 
a second and higher curve, which represents the entire consump- 
tion of the nation. The fluctuation of this curve in relation to the 
line of regular progression which denotes the population of each 
year, shows in a clear and interesting manner what the course of 
meat consumption has been, while the three lines marked sheep, 
cattle, and pigs respectively, represent, for convenient reference, 
the numbers of each class of stock in the country in each year. 
I may here point out that at the rate of general consumption 
roughly assumed to prevail in the earliest of the seven periods 
given in the table, it would seem that even then we were not 
sustaining from our own produce all our own people by fully 
two-and-a-half million persons. It was then held, and I believe 
quite rightly, that something like 45,000 tons per annum of 
butcher's meat in all its forms was needed for the maintenance 
of each round million of British citizens. We may take it 
therefore, of course somewhat looselv, that the foreign quota of 
1867-9 sufficed for 2,500,000 of the 30,700,000 persons then 
resident in this country. At the same head-rate of consumption, 
the foreign quota of 1885-6 would furnish meat not for the new 
six millions only, or for that number added to the foreign-fed 
two-and-a-lialf millions of the earlier date, but for fully ten 
