Twenty Years' Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 475 
Pig-meat Imported from: — 
Bacon. 
Hams. 
Pork (salted) 
Total. 
United States 
Denmark 
(000 omitted.) 
tons. 
129-3 
lG-8 
9-9 
G-5 
- 7 
(000 omitted.) 
tons. 
42-1 
•1 
4-8 
■2 
-1 
(000 omitted.) 
tons. 
10-C 
1-6 
•3 
1-2 
•8 
(OCO omitted.) 
tons. 
1820 
18-5 
15-0 
7-9 
1-6 
Total 
163-2 
47-3 
14-5 
225-0 
ducts," although both interesting and instructive, would open too 
long a chapter for insertion in a general survey such as this. 
In our mutton imports it must strike the enquirer how 
relativeh little, from 1872 to 18^2, the well-known decline in 
our home flocks apparently affected the volume of yearly imports. 
Little if any larger share per head of our population, even now, 
comes in the shape of imported live sheep. But the compara- 
tively recent development of the frozen-mutton trade since 1882 
has revolutionised our mutton imports, forming a new factor in 
our import-records, and in the anxieties and calculations of the 
flockmasters at home. There are features of much novelty in 
the trade, and much uncertainty in any attempt to forecast its 
future. The prices of the present year will, however, offer a 
crucial test of the possibility of large and permanent Austra- 
lasian or South American imports, and the question may well 
form a future subject of special consideration when the results 
of the year are complete. Suffice it here to note, as the table 
on page 473 shows, that although these frozen imports have 
doubled themselves in the later group of years and now exceed 
the whole bulk of the old live-sheep trade, the entire receipts 
of this form of foreign mutton would not give 2 lb. per annum 
to each person in these islands. The whole mutton imports 
amount to only about a third of those of beef, and do not form 
a fourth part of the weight supplied by the bacon, the hams 
and the pork which we receive from abroad. 
I would offer here some grounds for regarding as improbable 
any additional competition in the live-sheep trade. My reason 
for disregarding the prospect in this respect as a serious one 
to the British flockmaster arises from a consideration of the 
present position of the flocks of any possible competitors. Let 
me summarise what has happened in twenty years' time as to 
the sources of our live-sheep imports. Taking four illustrative 
dates, the sheep we imported were, in thousands (000 omitted), 
as follows 
