Contagious Diseases of Live Stock. 
277 
The published averages of wholesale prices in the Metro 
politan Cattle Market show a difference of about 2 d. per lb. 
moi'e in 1883 than in 1887 for all kinds of meat. 
Valuable as agricultural statistics are now generally ad- 
mitted to be, the collection of them was at the outset by no means 
popular, and the first Returns of I860 are most incomplete. 
Since that date they have been year by year rendered more reliable, 
and through them the enormous value of the interest at stake has 
been ascertained. Major Craigie, in his address to the Croydon 
Farmers’ Club, November 21, 1889, said: — 
That the home meat crop represented G38,000 tons of beef, 362,000 
tons of mutton, and 265,000 tons of pig meat, total 1,315,000 tons ; that the 
foreign live imports represent 137,000 tons, and the dead meat 336,000 tons. 
That, out of every 100 lb. of butcher’s meat consumed in the United 
Kingdom, nearly 74 lb. are produced from our home stock, 19 lb. are 
imported as dead meat, and just over 7 lb. arrive “ on the hoof.” 
This careful statistician added : — 
If we may rely on these figures, the contention of those who igno- 
rantly resent precautionary interference on sanitary grounds with the free 
entrance of imports, no matter what are the dangers thereby run, is reduced 
to an arithmetical absurdity. In order to make sure of no diminution, even 
temporary, in the yearly volume of that 7 lb. of meat in every 100 lb. which 
live importations mean, our rulers are to be asked to imperil by foreign 
diseases the 74 lb. produced at home. 
The supposed conflicting interests of the 330 borough 
authorities as against the 92 county authorities were associated 
with the reluctance which each felt in enforcing the provisions 
of the Act of 1878, which placed the cost of compensation for 
slaughter upon the rates for an object that was purely national, 
and were given as the reason why the Act was never rigidly en- 
forced. It became manifest that pleuro-pneumonia would not be 
exterminated unless it was taken in hand by a central authority 
and compensation was provided from the national exchequer. A 
large deputation, consisting of members of the Royal Agricultural 
Society, the Central and Associated Chambers of Agriculture, and 
other important bodies, waited upon the Lord President of the 
Council, with the result that in 1890 an Act was passed to carry 
these objects into effect. The Act came into operation on Sept- 
ember 1, 1890, with a most successful result. No case of pleuro- 
pneumonia has occurred in Ireland since September 2G, 1892, 
and Great Britain would have been rendered free about the same 
period had it not been for two cargoes of cattle from Canada landed 
at Dundee. They were sold and removed from the lairs on 
October G ; the following day one of the animals was noticed to 
be ill, and on October 8 a veterinary surgeon was consulted, who 
pronounced it to be a decided case of pleuro-pneumonia. The 
