JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
XV r . — Report on the American and Canadian Meat Trade. By 
J. P. Sheldon, of Sheen, Ashbourne, Professor of Agriculture 
in the Agricultural College, Cirencester. 
ALTHOUGH the subject of this Report is full of interest to 
British farmers, no one can pretend to indicate the extent to 
which the new meat trade will influence the production of animal 
food in these islands ; nor can he say how far it will affect the 
prospects of British farmers. Predictions, as to the future of 
the interests involved in this question, are necessarily to a great 
extent mere conjectures ; still we may obtain tolerably clear 
ideas of the possibilities of the new trade, by an examination 
of statistics and other information bearing thereon. The infor- 
mation which I now lay before the readers of this Journal has 
been gathered from a variety of sources in America and in 
England, and from personal investigation where possible. It 
embraces statistics bearing on the past and present of the trade, 
and inferences drawn by various practical men as to its pro- 
bable development in the future. The former, I believe, are 
trustworthy ; whilst the latter, probably, come as near to the 
truth as human predictions can well be expected to do. 
Since the days when the repeal of the Corn Laws was advocated 
by the far-seeing men of that period, few things, if any, directly 
touching the interests of agriculture in this country, have been 
so widely discussed, or have produced in certain quarters so 
much apprehension, as the importation of American meat. 
Amongst the dairying and the meat-producing farmers of these 
islands, whose prospects are immediately affected by it, the 
subject of American meat produced, for a time, something closely 
akin to a " scare." And although the panic has now worn out 
its first flush of fever, and men can more calmly estimate the 
situation, yet a settled apprehension remains in many minds 
that British stock-farming may now be regarded as shorn of 
VOL. XIII. — S. S. Y 
