290 
SOME MINOR RURAL INDUSTRIES. 
The steady increase year by year in the quantities of poultry 
and eggs imported into the United Kingdom can hardly fail to 
suggest the question as to whether the money which is thus ex- 
pended could not, without very much trouble, be kept at home. 
Sometimes the finger of scorn is pointed at the English farmer 
because he does not produce from English soil all the beef and 
mutton, or all the wheat, which is needed for home consumption. 
The rejoinder is that in the case of almost any staple article of 
agricultural produce we could raise in this country all that is 
required, but that this would necessarily involve an equivalent 
displacement of production in the case of some other article or 
articles. 1 With regard to poultry and eggs, however, it is sub- 
mitted that, within limits, this is not so. It is believed that 
the rearing and fattening of poultry — including fowls, ducks, 
geese, and turkeys — as well as the output of eggs, might be very 
largely extended at home without displacing any other kind of 
produce. That there is considerable inducement to embark upon 
these minor industries appears evident from the following 
figures, which show that even within the brief space of the last 
five years the value of our imports of poultry and eggs has risen 
from 3,480,306L to 4,454,598^, an increase of nearly one 
million sterling : — 
Value of Poultry and Game (Alive or Dead), and of Eggs, 
Imported into the United Kingdom in each year from 
188S to 1893. 
Poultry 
Eggs 
1888 
403,197 
. 3,077,100 
1889 
472,686 
3,122,813 
1890 
497,858 
3,428,802 
3,480,306 
3,595,490 
3,926,660 
Poultry 
Eggs ‘ . 
1891 
£ 
. . 456,970 
• • o,o0o,522 
1892 
£ 
583,430 
3,794,718 
1893 
£ 
578,959 
3,875,639 
3,962,501 
4,378,148 
4,454,598 
1 See on this point the concluding remarks (pp. 126-131) of the paper by 
Sir John Lawes and Sir Henry Gilbert on the Rome Produce, Imports, $c., of 
Wheat (Journal, Vol. IV., 3rd Series, Part I., 1893). With reference, for 
example, to our imports of dairy produce, they say (p. 127) : “ In fact, to 
produce the increased amounts of butter and cheese supposed would require 
several million acres of grass land, necessarily displacing some other produce, 
involving increased importation of something else to compensate the loss; an,d 
j would also require increased importation of food-stuffs for the cqvys,” 
