Growth and Development of the Trade in Frozen Mutton. 227' 
province of Buenos Ayres, whence, indeetl, it may be said the 
whole Argentine exportation comes. Messrs. Nelson freeze at 
Zareta. The station of the Messrs. Sansinena is at Barracas, in 
a suburb of the city of Buenos Ayrcs itself, where about 1,000 
carcasses are frozen daily and shipped direct from the wharf 
adjoining. The River Plate Fresh Meat Company possess one 
station — closed from cholera in 1886, and not now working — 
at Colona, on the opposite side of the river and in the territory 
of Uruguay ; but their regular freezing establishment is at 
Campana, about 160 miles higher up the river than Buenos 
Ayres, and they ship their supplies from that point. The 
Terrason establishment lies still further north, at San Nicolas — 
almost on the border of the province of Santa Fe, and many miles 
above Buenos Ayres. 
The sheep are, in the case of the Barracas consignments, for 
the most part drawn from the southern and western parts of the 
Buenos Ayres province, or from the immediate neighbourhood of 
the city. As we are apt here to overestimate the possible export 
from a country so rich in sheep, we should not forget that it is 
never reckoned that more than ten per cent, of any given flock 
of sheep can be counted on as fit for freezing in one year, and 
contracts for the supply of 2,000 or 10,000 sheep a year are now 
what are being made from the owners of flocks m;mberiug 
20,000 or 100,000, as the case may be, subject to a right of 
selection, and with an option to the owner to sell fewer if the 
taking of the full number would denude his flock of all his best 
animals. Only wethers are frozen, and the weights of these 
are, on the whole, improving under the impulse of good stock 
imported from our own country. The frozen sheep landed here 
by Messrs. Sansinena, after a good year, average as high as 
48 lbs. apiece; those of the River Plate Company not much 
over 42 lbs. to 44 lbs. each. On March 8 last, indeed, I myself 
saw in Smithfield Market a number of carcasses of a far higher 
weight than this imported from Buenos Ayres by the " Heliades," 
and, having the curiosity to have one of these unusually large 
carcasses weighed, I found it turned the scale at 10 st. 2 lbs. 
On inquiry I found this steamer brought 6,585 carcasses ave- 
raging 61 lbs. weight apiece, and 6,083 averaging 52 lbs. This 
shows what may be done, so that we must not count on the 
perpetual inferiority of the River Plate mutton. 
The bulk of the whole trade of these companies still comes 
to this country ; but in recent years Messrs. Sansinena have been 
shipping also carcasses to France, and have effected a footing 
in the Paris market. The relative importance of the firms 
engaged may be gauged by the following figures, quoted from a 
a 2 
