114 PARLIAMENTARY PUBLICATIONS. 

both for beef and mutton than in the preceding twelve 
months, the data furnished by the newer system of live weight 
prices for cattle, which have been available since 1893, being 
specially quoted as furnishing a better measure of the level of 
prices than isin any other form available. 
The report refers also in detail to the numerous tables of 
imports of agricultural produce which Sind a place for con- 
venient reference in the annual volume. In the case of grain 
supplies attention is particularly drawn to the changes in 
the origin of our imports of wheat and flour, the leading 
features of the past year being the restriction of the Russian 
exports and the return of the Argentine total to the level of 
1895, which had the effect of placing that Republic as second 
only to the United States as an exporter of wheat to the 
United Kingdom. | 
As in recent years, special attention is drawn in the 
report to the additions and improvements effected in the 
tabular summary of colonial and foreign agricultural — 
statistics which are offered for such comparison as 
may be possible with those of our own country. 
Fuller tables of the crop area and production of New South 
Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Victoria, West 
Australia, New Zealand, and Tasmania have been again © 
supplied, with such figures as are available for the two 
provinces of Canada, Ontario and Manitoba, which alone 
supply annual information as to their agricultural position. 
Among the tables relating to foreign countries it is noted 
that the quinquennial enquiry of 1898 in Denmark has 
permitted a useful extension of the information previously at 
hand as to the numbers and classes of the live stock of that 
country. The statistics for Argentina and for Spain have 
also been carried further in the present volume. 
The report concludes with a notice of the drift of the recent 
changes in areas and production, and in the number of live 
stock, enumerated in those foreign countries whence official 
information has been received in time to be summarised in 
the final tables of the volume of Agricultural Returns. In 
this connection the form of the tables previously employed 
has been to some extent recast, so as to present, in the 
