Wool Production. 
83 
this is a correct deduction from the figures could only be 
decided by a critical examination into the alternative that may 
be hazarded as to a larger and quicker outturn from a like 
stock of animals at the later date as farming methods improve. 
This cannot be attempted here, but accepting Mr. Holmes’ 
estimates it 'would seem that, per head of their own people, the 
United States have less and not more animal wealth to dispose of. 
By a series of very .ingenious calculations this official report 
succeeds in constructing a theoretical “composite animal” into 
which is merged for convenient statistical comparison the 
varying numbers of cattle, sheep, and swine ; and on this basis 
it is alleged that whereas in 1840 every 1,000 persons would 
have had 1,043 such “ animals ” to depend on, the ratio had 
dropped to 860 in 1860, and to 838 in 1880. After an 
apparently abnormal recovery to 900 animals in 1890, there 
remained, at the close of the century, only 700 of such com- 
posite units of meat supply available to every thousand of the 
American people. 
WOOL PRODUCTION. 
Among the official publications of the year a special interest 
attaches to the report embodying the conclusions of the Board 
of Agi-iculture on the results of their investigation of wool 
production in 1905 and 1906. Numerous estimates of the total 
clip of wool in this country have of course been made. The 
suggestions made in the earlier individual inquiries in 1800, in 
1845, and in 1858 differed very widely, and they had no such 
basis of fact as has been available since the numbers of our 
fiocks began to be recorded forty years ago. Mr. Archibald 
Hamilton’s figures in the Royal Statistical Journal of 1870, 
were the first relying on the new returns, and the older readers 
of this Journal will remember the article which appeared in 1875, 
in which Earl Cathcart offered another calculation, founded also 
on Messrs. Hubbards’ tables, and resting on the basis of the 
official enumerations of sheep in 1867-69. This gave an estimate 
of the varying local weights of wool clipped in different counties. 
The total then suggested left out of account, apparently, the 
quantities of fleeces from slaughtered • sheep and from lambs, 
and was no more than 124,000,000 lb., against Mr. Hamilton’s 
earlier estimate of practically 160,000,000 lb., while Mr. John 
Algernon Clarke, writing also in this Journal only three years 
later, and employing as his starting point the flocks of 1875, 
followed the same method with the still lower result of 
119,473,000 lb. Sir James Caird in the same year as Mr. Clarke 
