Twenty Years^ Changes in our Poreign Meat Supplies. 473 
rated item to the whole receipts, can best be shown by throwing 
into tabular form the figures for the last recorded year, 1886, 
in the two categories of live and dead meat, so far as officially 
distinguished : — 
Class of Imports. 
Live Animals. 
Dead-meat. 
Total. 
Per Cent. 
Unenumerated (cliiefly beef) 
tons. 
91,222 
29,673 
975 
tons. 
50,096 
32,614 
23,684 
228,525 
tons. 
141,318 
62,287 
23,634 
229,500 
SO 9 
13-6 
5-2 
50-3 
Total . . . . 
121,870 
334,869 
456,739 
100-0 
Such figures as these at once designate the foreign pig as by 
far a more formidable competitor than the foreign sheep or the 
foreign ox. Quite one-half of the entire import of last year and 
two-thirds of the whole imports of dead meat are composed in one 
form or another of the produce of the pig, either in the shape of 
bacon, hams, or pork, although it will be noticed that so far as live 
imports of swine are concerned, the result is a scarcely appreci- 
able total. Such a table, too, defines the extent of our uncertainty 
as to the class of the " unenumerated " imports. These make 
but 5 per cent, of the total, and although 1 might perhaps have 
ventured, having regard to the countries whence our preserved 
meats come and the large proportion sent by the United States 
(whose exports in this form are mainly beef), to distribute this 
item roughly, three-fourths or even four-fifths to beef and one- 
fourth or one-fifth to mutton, I hesitate to do so on account of 
the varying ratio of the beef and mutton in this particular 
import in different years. Omitting for the moment this 
5 per cent, of unenumerated receipts, the fluctuations of beef, 
mutton and pig-meat in the groups of years already referred to 
may be shown as follows, condensing for convenience and easy 
reading the figures which represent the average annual imports 
of each period in " thousands " of tons to one place of decimals : — 
Beef. 
Mutton. 
Pig-mrat. 
Period. 
Live. 
Dead. 
Total. 
Live. 
Dead. 
Total. 
Live. 
Dead. 
Total. 
1867-8-9 .. 
43-4 
12-0 
55-4 
15-1 
15-1 
2-2 
40-1 
42-3 
1870-1-2 
50-8 
12-4 
63-2 
22-3 
22-3 
2-9 
73-9 
76-8 
1873-4-5 .. 
50-4 
12-3 
62-7 
24-8 
24-8 
3-9 
150-8 
154-7 
1876-7-8 
61-7 
30-3 
92-0 
26-0 
26-6 
1-8 
182-8 
184-6 
1879-80-1 .. 
89-8 
48-3 
138-1 
26-1 
26-1 
1-9 
268-3 
270-2 
1882-3-4 .. 
113-5 
47-8 
161-3 
29-2 
15-5 
44-7 
1-2 
183-3 
184-5 
1885-6 
99-0 
53-6 
152-6 
25-3 
30-6 
55-9 
-9 
223-3 
224-2 
