482 Twenty Years' Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 
living imports. Latterly their relative value as a factor in the 
competition has fallen off, though some of us are slow to recog- 
nize the change which, apart from its direct interest, is of 
indirect importance in another way, for just in proportion to 
this change has our freedom from imported disease increased. 
Great have been the alterations in the sources of our live 
cattle. As in the case of sheep, I will contrast the numbers 
from the more important countries, omitting our imports from 
the Channel Islands, in the following tables, entering only for 
convenient reading the figures at the nearest thousands, and 
thus omitting "000" in each case. 
Cattle Imported from : — 
1869. 
1877. 
1883. 
1886. 
(000 omiUcd.) (000 omitted.) 
(000 omitted.) 
(000 omitlcd.) 
8 
83 
34 
28 
Holland 
62 
45 
39 
32 
21 
3 
3 
20 
27 
23 
8 
13 
9 
15 
22 
6 
5 
50 
119 
69 
3 
5 
27 
13 
8 
53 
67 
11 
155 
114 
1 
1 
216 
198 
470 
318 
Very significant are the changes in the origin of our imports 
that are shown by such a table as this. In 1869 our 
whole supply of cattle was European. Our more immediate 
neighbours, Holland, Belgium, France, Spain, and Germany, 
provided 199,000 out of 216,000 arrivals, or 92 per cent, of the 
whole. Last year only 48,000 head out of a total a third as 
large again, or just 15 per cent, of the importation, was drawn 
from the countries named. Two leading changes of current 
in the import of cattle have thus occurred. One is' the reduc- 
tion of our German and Dutch importation and the substitution 
of a trade with our Scandinavian neighbours, which has deve- 
loped tenfold, from 8000 to 83,000 head. The second feature is 
the creation since 1876 of the Transatlantic trade. Nor does the 
alteration in mere numbers suffice to denote the change quite 
strongly enough. The large proportion of calves in such im- 
ports as those from Holland, and the relatively lower weights of 
European as compared with American stock, is not thus shown. 
If I convert, at the rates suggested by our Privy Council 
officers, the head of cattle shown above into their equivalent 
weight if taken for slaughter, I find that since the American 
