154 
Management of Grass Land. 
siderably in different years, it has never — even in the year of the 
Cattle Plague (1866) — reached a point at which it could mate- 
rially affect the supply of meat for the million. It is satisfactory 
to find that the recent sanitary regulations, limiting the landing 
and removal of foreign cattle, sheep, and swine, have not dimi- 
nished the importations ; the average numbers of each kind of 
stock imported in the three last years — 1869, 1870, 1871 — having 
materially exceeded the average of the whole nine years recorded 
in the Table. 
We have next to consider our home resources, in which we 
are greatly assisted by the returns annually published by the 
Board of Trade. Unfortunately these returns were not, until 
1867, sufficiently complete to be used as a basis for calculation. 
Table (B) gives the numbers of the live stock in the United 
Kingdom from 1867 to 1871 ; and by comparing tables (A) 
and (B) we learn the very small proportion which the imported 
flocks and herds bear to the natives. Even in 1871, when the 
prices of beef and mutton, and the numbers of the live stock 
brought into our ports, reached higher figures than ever before 
known, the number of cattle imported was only 2*66 per 
cent, of the home stock, the sheep 2 91 per cent., and the swine 
2*07 per cent. 
Table B. 
Number of Cattle, Sheep, and Pigs in the United Kingdom, in each year from 1863 
1871 inclusive, sliowiug the increase or decrease from year to year. 
Years. 
Cattle. 
increase or 
Decrease from 
previous year. 
Sheep. 
Increase or 
Decrease from 
previous year. 
Swine. 
Increase c 
Decrease fr 
previous ye 
1867 
8,7.31,473 
33,817,951 
4,221,100 
1868 
9,033,416 
+ 351,943 
3.5,607,812 
+ 1,789,861 
3,189,167 
- 1,031, 
1869 
9,078,282 
- 5,134 
34,2.50,272 
-1,356,-540 
3,028,394 
- 160, 
1870 
9,235,0.52 
+ 156,770 
32,786,783 
-1,463,489 
3,650,730 
+ 622, 
1871 
9,347,789 
+ 112,737 
31,410,829 
- 1 ,369,954 
4,136,903 
< 
+ 486, 
Between | Increase 
1 86 7 and 1 of 
1871. ( Cattle 
; 
1 = 616,316 
Decrease \ 
ofSbeep / 
= 2,401,122 
Decrease 1 
of Swine ) 
=84,197 
Taking the average of the five years given in Table (B), the 
imported cattle, sheep, and swine bore to the home-breds 
the proportions of 2*17 per cent., 189 per cent., and 1'82 
per cent., respectively. If, therefore, by imposing moderate 
restrictions on the movement of our flocks and herds, both home 
and foreign, we can check the spread of disease sufficiently to 
save the lives of 2 per cent, of our sheep and cattle, we shall add 
to their numbers an amount ecjual to the whole of our foreign 
supply. 
