Growth and Derelopment of the Trade in Frozen Mutton. 207 
The growth of the fresh or frozen trade will be best traced, 
however, by putting out of sight the live imports altogether, 
and regarding only the meat which reaches our shores dead in a 
fresh or preserved condition. We can only go back here for a 
short period, but the complete head-rate figures for the last six 
years, for fresh mutton and fresh beef, will indicate with pre- 
cision the emphatic difference between a growing and a station- 
ary trade. 
Fresh mutton Fresh beef 
Tear imports per head imports per head 
lbs. lbs. 
1883 ... -75 . . . 2-51 
1884 . . . 1'26 . . . 2-73 
1885 . . . 1-76 . . . 2-78 
1886 . . . 1-96 . . . 2-46 
1887 . . . 2-36 . . . 1-99 
1888 . . . 2-96 . . . 2-50 
Foreign mutton, it ajDpears, supplies to-day nearly half a 
pound more for each unit of our population than is provided 
by the much longer established fresh beef trade. The pi-oblem, 
therefore, which any one who is calculating the chances of the 
further growth of the newer trade must try to face is, whether 
the course of events already seen in the check of fresh beef 
imports is to be paralleled or not in the case of mutton. And 
for such an object it is obviously necessary to extend our view 
and examine in some detail the several sources of supply, the 
cost, and the conditions of transit — all these factors bearing 
materially on the question whether we have before us the pro- 
spect of a temporary, a permanent, or an augmenting com- 
petition. 
Comparatively little of the 49,450 tons of fresh mutton 
which reached our shores in 1888 came from the countries 
which were recognised as exporters when this item first ap- 
peared in our annual records. The trade is not only, therefore, 
a new one, but it has vai'ied in its character in the brief period 
of its existence. In 1882, an aggregate weight of 9,400 tons 
only was reported, and two-thirds of the imports then accounted 
for came directly from Holland. This trade is not a frozen 
one at all. In 1888, the Dutchmen furnished much less than 
a tenth part of our whole imports — only 8'8 per cent., in fact. 
New Zealand first sent over frozen sheep in 1882, and in that 
year could not be called the source of more than 3 per cent, 
of the imports. To-day her quota, measured by the weight of her 
sheep, is over 50 per cent., or more than half of the whole 
supply. Again, the Argentine Republic, wholly unnoticed as 
an exporter of mutton six years ago, furnishes to-day more than 
a third of the whole, or nearly 36 per cent, of the arrivals. 
