478 Twenty Years' Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 
fifths of our whole receipts, they leave only the Danish imports 
— for the arrivals from Norway and Sweden are too small to 
affect the supply — to exhibit any degree of expansiveness. 
Denmark has indeed earned for herself an agricultural pre- 
dominance among European exporters of all sorts of agricul- 
tural produce, and under her name we are receiving a consider- 
able supply for so small a country. But it is to be remembered 
that no less than 31,880, or more than a fourth of her last year's 
sheep, were drawn, not from Denmark proper, but from that 
distant possession of the Danish Crown, the island of Iceland.- 
The steady rise of Danish agricultural ability, if I may use the 
phrase, forbids any confident opinion that more may not be done 
hereafter than at present in sheep exports from Denmark, but in 
no case, having regard to the territory and the flocks in question, 
can a very serious addition to our supplies be expected from thence. 
And clearly, if we look further east, and trace the source of the 
larger part of our sheep imports to the sheep-bearing districts of 
Germany or Austro-Hungary, I confess I should rather expect a 
material reduction than an increase of competition from that 
quarter. A few comparative figures, illustrative of the changes 
which have been happening on the Continent and elsewhere in 
the flocks of the several nations, will explain the position, and the 
table on the opposite page has been compiled with this object. 
Such a table, however rough the figures, which cannot be 
got for precisely identical years, makes one thing plain, viz., that 
the enumerated countries of Europe, and they include all we 
have to deal with, are fast retrograding in their stock of sheep. 
Even in these Scandinavian countries, whence, as we have seen, 
somewhat larger imports reach us, there is a loss of half a 
million head. Yet Norway and Denmark have far more sheep 
now per 100 inhabitants than other parts of Europe, and I 
question if we can go on drawing 800,000 head of sheep a year 
from countries which have about half the stock we ourselves 
possess in proportion to population, — even if it be quite true 
that the sheep exists less for mutton than for wool, so far as the 
domestic demands of the Continent are concerned. The Con- 
tinental losses, it will be seen, are relatively far greater than 
our own ; and though the precise reason of this would be an 
interesting question to discuss, it hardly concerns us here 
except to show the small chance of augmented competition. 
I have omitted from my table the Southern countries of 
Europe, from which we draw no supplies. Russia I have 
included, as we got a few head of sheep from that country 
occasionally before 1878. Had I given the figures I have 
seen for Spain or for Italy, it would have appeared that heavy 
reductions in the flocks of each have occurred in the past twenty 
