298 Report on the American and Canadian Meat Trade. 
cultivation or in farms, and of the number and variety of the 
live-stock owned by farmers. It is, however, probable, or at all 
events not improbable, that American Returns of this nature are 
less accurate than similar ones in England — not that the latter 
can by any means pretend to be strictly so. But this proba- 
bility is obvious when we consider for a moment the vast dis- 
parity in size between the two countries, and the more scattered 
condition of the farming classes in America — especially in the 
Western States of the Union — thus making the collection of 
statistics more desultory and uncertain. But the Returns may, 
nevertheless, be accepted as approximating pretty closely to 
the truth ; and it may at the same time be assumed that the 
machinery for collecting them is gradually approaching nearer 
to accuracy. I propose, in this division of my Report, to deal 
only with land and crops, leaving the cattle to be dealt with 
subsequently ; and I take this question of the land first, because 
it is the prime factor in the production of food, and because it 
is a fixed and tangible quantity, so far, at all events, as area is 
concerned. 
The prodigious resources of the United States, agriculturally 
speaking, are at once apparent in the following figures, which 
indicate the total area of the Union. The proportions of land 
in farms, and of land surveyed but not in farms, are from the 
Census of 1870. I give the statistics in extenso, because they 
possess great interest and importance in connection with the 
subject of the meat-supply, inasmuch as they illustrate not only 
the vast resources of the America of the future, taken as a whole, 
but also the present capabilities of those sections of the country 
which are said to be specially well adapted to the raising and 
feeding of stock. 
The total superficial area of the United States and Territories 
is estimated by the Government statisticians to be 3,611,889 
square miles. Referring to Table No. 1, we find that the 
acreage of land is computed by survey to reach the stupen- 
dous total of 2,311,544,959 acres! This includes, however, 
the mountains and forest-lands, but not the water-surface of the 
country. Compare this with the total acreage of land in the 
British Islands. We have here a total of 76,318,648 acres, 
including woods and forests ; and the comparison between the 
two countries stands as one to thirty, leaving a balance in favour 
of America of 21,985,519 acres! Or, in other words, if the 
States and Territories were in thirty divisions, instead of in forty- 
eight, each of them would be larger than the whole of the British 
Islands. As they stand, however, six of them are each larger, 
Texas alone being considerably more than twice as large as 
Great Britain. (See Table I., p. 300.) 
