214 Growth and Development of the Trade in Frozen Mutton. 
toria were content, some years ago, to send us what mutton they 
could profitably sell us in the form which entails its entry among 
our canned provisions, that supply, though it would not, under 
the existing form of our Board of Trade classification, be called 
mutton, came in all the same as unenumerated meat. And if 
they now prefer to let us have the mutton, not in tins, but under 
its own name, and have diminished their canned export accord- 
ingly, it is not altogether a new competition with which we are 
face to face. To put it another way, if our taste here has been 
transferred, as I am disposed to think it has, from those tins of 
boiled mutton — " Australian mutton," of which, for a time, the 
British public heard a good deal, while its virtues were energeti- 
cally sung — and if we now prefer to have the carcasses of the 
surplus sheep of our colonies sent us hard frozen, instead of 
boned and cooked and sealed up, this is a transfer of the competi- 
tion, not a new supply. 
To test the soundness of this view, I would contrast the total 
meat export and the frozen mutton section over a considerable 
series of years ; but as it is desirable to see whether the above 
suggestion may be applicable to more than one exporting country, 
I give the data for all the main sources of the frozen trade, the 
figures being in every case, it must be understood, in thousands 
of cwts. — " 000 " being omitted in each entry : — 
Year 
New South Wales 
Victoria 
New Zealand 
Argentine 
Total 
dead 
meat 
imported 
Of whicli 
received 
as 
mutton 
Total 
dead 
meat 
imported 
Of which 
received 
as 
mutton 
Total 
dead 
meat 
imported 
Of which 
received 
as mutton 
Total 
dead meat 
imported 
Of which 
received 
as mutton 
1870 
1871 
1872 
1873 
1874 
1875 
1876 
1877 
1878 
1879 
1880 
1881 
1882 
1883 
1884 
1885 
1886 
1887 
1888 
cwts. 
13 
50 
58 
45 
54 
30 
49 
68 
21 
36 
58 
82 
89 
156 
92 
146 
41 
138 
136 
cwts. 
8 
20 
26 
9 
5 
21 
44 
cwts. 
54 
139 
159 
80 
81 
66 
69 
69 
35 
30 
48 
55 
57 
42 
61 
63 
39 
28 
3 
cwts. 
23 
lO 
35 
45 
33 
21 
Nil 
cwts. 
2 
36 
83 
78 
56 
9 
5 
22 
36 
24 
22 
8 
28 
108 
270 
321 
374 
437 
574 
cwts. 
6 
72 
241 
284 
347 
396 
499 
cwts. 
4 
5 
4 
3 
15 
16 
13 
45 
125 
220 
265 
407 
cwts. 
4 
40 
112 
190 
251 
353 
Here the meat trade, viewed as a whole, is seen to be divided 
