480 Twenty Years' Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 
therefore higher in the scale than any other European nation, 
unless we were to include in our survey some of the new statelets 
in the south-eastern corner of the Continent. Their fleecy wealth 
seems really considerable. Roumania, Greece, and Servia, 
boast by their later returns — earlier ones, for comparison, I 
have not been able to find — a collective flock of nearly 9,000,000 
head, and range in the order named as having respectively from 
115 to 195 sheep to each 100 inhabitants. There may be a 
question some day of exports from this quarter of Europe, but it. 
cannot be till the risk of importing disease as well as mutton 
with each cargo has departed, which now leads us to treat 
these territories, like the Turkish, Italian, and Russian pro- 
vinces, as forbidden ground. 
But if my table has one lesson in its upper portion as to the 
declining sources of our hitherto main import of sheep, it 
promptly reverses the impression by a striking picture lower 
down, of the enormously augmented flocks now accumulating, 
despite all occasional checks, in our Australasian Colonies. 
Even if I were to add the more doubtful figures of the diminu- 
tion of sheep stocks in Spain and Italy to the scarcely disputable 
losses of nearly 30,000,000 head in the enumerated countries of 
Europe, the gigantic loss in the older portions of the world's 
surface would still be more than balanced by the gain in the new 
flocks mustering by millions annually on the other side of the 
Equator. The prospect, however, of increasing competition from 
this quarter would involve a discussion as to the permanence 
of the frozen or preserved mutton trade which, along with the 
prospects of the South American supplies, must be reserved for 
future consideration. 
Assuming the accuracy of the estimates made as to the 
home produce of our cattle, the foreigner seems to grow now 
16 per cent., or we may say one-sixth part, of the beef eaten on 
British soil. In this respect it is clear enough we are very far 
from realising Sir Henry Thompson's advice of 1872. The 
diagram, on the next page will show the relative proportions of 
home and foreign beef on our British markets in each year of the 
twenty. Put broadly, the foreign supply on the average of 
years since 1879 would have furnished 3,000,000 British sub- 
jects with their entire meat-supply, supposing that supply to 
be composed of beef alone. 
As we have seen, rather over one-third of the beef importation 
reaches us as dead meat, and rather under two-thirds comes to 
us alive. Previous to 1876 only about one-fifth part of the 
foreign beef-supply was imported dead, and up to that year, from 
which also we may date the starting of the American trade, the 
attention of our farmers here was concentrated mainly on the 
