Ticenty Years^ Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 477 
which struck me during a visit to the Dominion three years 
ago was the remarkable absence of sheep. In Winnipeg I 
found mutton as dear as in London, and indeed both on 
Canadian and on American territory mutton was a somewhat 
rare commodity, and good mutton very much rarer. Americans 
confess their inability to compete with us in at least this 
particular, and look forward to a visit to London to enjoy a 
good mutton-chop. 
Not from this quarter then, can I anticipate any material 
extension of live-sheep imports. Whatever Australia or South 
America may have in store for us in the way of cheap frozen 
mutton, their million-headed flocks are not likely to reach us 
alive, and if the live-sheep trade is to continue, we are prac- 
tically confined to the older countries of Europe, which have 
all along sent us our main supply. 
France was once an exporter of sheep to England. She 
sent 9000 head over in 1869, and once in 1872, 1 believe, as 
many as 21,800 sheep; but long before we ceased, in 1884, to 
take her animals at all, on account of the risk of foot-and-mouth 
disease, she had practically dropped out of the race. Nor can 
we forget that France is a far larger importer of sheep than we 
are ourselves. For ten years back her average imports have been 
twice our own, or over 2,000,000. France is so far, therefore, 
from being a competitor with our flocks in this country, that she 
is indeed the largest buyer in the European markets, besides 
drawing from her Algerian colonies over 600,000 head of sheep 
per annum. Her neighbour, Belgium, also, though of course on 
B smaller scale, is much more an importer than an exporter of 
sheep. Our Belgian imports have fluctuated much in the last 
20 years. In 1876, over a quarter of a million sheep came to 
England under the designation at least of Belgian ; in 1886, 
barely 2600 were so enumerated, but I believe that this trade 
has been largely of a transit kind, and that the ports of Belgium 
are only nominally the origin of the stock which passed through 
them from less populous districts further east. 
The impossibility of distinguishing the true country of origin 
in the case of exports passing, for example, from Germany or 
Austria through Belgium or the Netherlands to England, is a 
matter which, with other similar defects in our knowledge of 
international trade, is now engaging the attention of a Com- 
mittee of the International Statistical Institute, which held its 
first meeting at Rome in April last. Till that difficulty be 
solved, it is not amiss to regard as one group the sheep from 
Holland, Germany and Belgium in the table I have given, when 
it will be seen that they vary but little from 800,000 head per 
annum throughout the last ten years. As they form four- 
