Report on the Agriculture of Sweden and Norway. 163 
received greater attention on account of that country having 
been the source from which the rinderpest has more than once 
come to us of late years, and also because it is the chief 
European granary to which the English consumer looks for 
supplies of wheat after a deficient harvest at home. Special 
features in the land-laws, the rural economy, or the methods of 
farming of other countries have attracted the attention of poli- 
tical economists and writers on agriculture ; but, so far as I 
know, the agriculture of Sweden and Norway has not hitherto 
been described. 
Within the last few years the question of the supply of meat 
to large towns has directed public attention in a marked degree 
to the more sparsely populated countries, whence supplies of 
cattle might be obtained at a price that would admit of their 
profitable importation into Great Britain. Again, in Sweden 
and Norway cottages are generally built of wood, and the recent 
extension of the cut-wood trade with those countries (see 
Tables I. and II.) led to the belief that imported wooden cot- 
tages for agricultural labourers might be erected in England 
more economically than with the usual materials of brick, stone, 
or concrete ; but the results of careful inquiries on this subject 
did not confirm this impression, and the experiments made have 
not been reduced to practice on a large scale. 
The statistics of the trade between the United Kingdom and 
Sweden and Norway are published annually in the Board of 
Trade Returns, and the following Tables (p. 164), culled from that 
source, show the progressive development of our import trade 
in cattle and other agricultural products from those countries 
during the five years, 1869-73. 
The total value of the imports from Sweden rose from 
4,498,384/. in 1869, to 7,739,744/. in 1873, showing an increase 
of over 70 per cent. ; and the total value of the imports from 
Norway rose from 1,855,161/. in 1869, to 2,947,033/. in 1873, 
or an increase of 60 per cent. In the case of Sweden, the value 
of the timber is about one-half, and in that of Norway about 
two-thirds, the total value of all the imports into the United 
Kingdom from those countries. 
Our imports of cattle and wood from Sweden and Norway 
have thus been recently increasing, and their importance is 
well shown in the following Tables. But the significance of 
our exports of live stock to those countries, though they also 
are increasing in quan'city and value, cannot be so well delineated 
in a table of figures, for as mere units they appear insignificant. 
I heir real importance lies in the fact that the animals go into 
Scandinavia for the purpose of improving the indigenous breeds, 
and thus largely contributing, not only to the greater weight of 
M 2 
