p32 AGRICULTURE IN CUBA. 

£6,740,000. Detailed statistics of the trade of Cuba are not 
yet available, except as regards live stock. Of this there 
were imported 339,000 steers in 189g, partly for food and 
partly for labour, besides 60,000 cattle for breeding pur- 
poses.« These cattle came mostly from Mexico and Central 
America. 
Stock raising has always been a lucrative industry in Cuba 
in times of peace, pasture and water being plentiful, and the 
climate equable, while there are few insect pests or diseases. 
The home market is large, as meat is widely used by all classes 
as an article of diet, and there is a constant demand for work- 
ing bullocks for farm use: cattle are therefore not exported. 
The profits of the industry in the early part of the last decade 
were little, if at all, inferior to those derived from the 
cultivation and manufacture of sugar, while the capital 
represented by the live stock alone, without taking the value 
of the farms into consideration, was over £18,000,000. This 
once flourishing industry was, however, annihilated during 
the late insurrection, and it practically no longer exists. 
Complete returns of the live stock in the whole island at the 
end of 1898 are not obtainable, but official data showed 
that in three provinces the horned cattle then numbered 
104,286, as compared with 1,401,743 in the same provinces in 
1892, in which year the total in the whole island was returned 
as 2,587,309. There would thus appear, on the same basis, 
to be not more than 200,000 cattle in Cuba at the end of 1808. 
It would seem difficult in the present impoverished con- 
dition of the country to restock the farms to any large extent ; 
and the lowest price for imported cattle being now about 
double the price of Cuban cattle eight years ago, without 
making any allowance for losses from the acclimatisation fevers 
co which all foreign animals are more or less liable, the island 
will probably for some considerable time be dependent on 
foreign countries fur its meat supply, the value of which is 
estimated at nearly two million pounds. 
Poultry farming is another industry which was almost 
completely destroyed during the insurrection. In an inte- 
resting pamphlet which was recently published locally, it is 
stated that before the war 25,000 fowls, worth about ts. rod. 
