492 Twenty Years' Changes in our Foreign Meat Supplies. 
The figures carry their own lesson. No country has so 
large a share of the import column as Great Britain. In the 
matter of exports, none, if we except perhaps Norway, the Cape 
and Ceylon, makes so poor a show, notwithstanding our sales of 
a lew high-priced breeding animals. The whole exports of Europe 
are, however, just half what she now wants, and for most of that 
she looks to the United States. 
Another feature of this trade demands a moment's notice. The . 
magnitude of the whole transaction, as well as the varying sources 
of the supply, is striking. Fifty millions sterling by this estimate 
represent the value of the imports of living animals and dead meat 
taken from one another by the various countries of the world, so 
lar as these come within the pale of civilization and possess acces- 
sible records of their ^foreign trade, as some even that would 
not like to be called uncivilized still hardly do. If the criticism 
be made that the export values are put at 47,900,000/. only, this 
is doubtless susceptible of the usual explanation that exports are 
valued when they start, and imports on arrival, with the cost of 
transit added. This trade sets naturally in greatest volume 
toward the populous centres of the Old VVorld, 47^ millions of 
the 50 millions of imports appearing in the European accounts. 
Half of this, or rather more, although the figure will doubtless 
surprise some people, is still due to an inter-European trade, 
and rather less than half comes from the new settlements of 
America, Australasia, and Africa. So far as regards yearly ex- 
ports of live stock, Germany is here credited with more than 
twice the American quota, or a value of 6,800,000/. against 
2,940,000/., while Austro-Hungary also supplies to countries 
outside her borders 3,235,000/. of her apparent surplus ; but in 
both these countries there was also a large volume of imports. 
Denmark, one of the least of States, while importing little, 
exported in 1884, 2,679,000/. worth of live-stock, nine-tenths 
of the value shipped from the United States. 
Within Europe there are only three countries which can be 
spoken of as doing a material trade in the export of live animals. 
These countries are Germany, Austro-Hungary, and Denmark. 
The live-stock thence exported represented in 1884 a value of 
12J millions sterling. All the rest of the European States 
collectively export to the value of 85 millions only. The 
European trade in dead meat, of which we used to hear a good 
deal in the earlier days of the agitation for the better exclusion of 
cattle disease, has not attained important dimensions, a value of 
3j millions appearing to cover the whole. Belgium, Denmark 
and Germany are the exporting countries. Belgium, indeed, 
although territorially one of the smallest and most densely 
peopled, seems a very large exporter, furnishing provisions to 
the value of b76,O00/. in 1884, although per contra the needs of 
