531 
Pie Ohad. SOC AS RETURNED UNDER 
Neste ENG Or €AtTiE ACT. 
The particulars furnished to the Board of Agricuiture by 
the returns made under the Markets and Fairs (Weighing of 
Cattle) Act, 1891, during the last quarter of 1900, enable the 
complete figures for that year to be presented in the table 
appended hereto (p. 538). These figures afford not only an 
opportunity of tracing the course of the market values of 
cattle during the three months ending with December last 
and during the year then ended, but with the data obtained 
under the comparatively modern system of live weight prices 
in the eight years for which statistics, more or less tentative, 
jhave been available as the result of the legislation on this 
subject during the closing years of the past century. 
Parliament, by passing in 1887 the Markets and Fairs 
(Weighing of Cattle) Act, recognised the necessity of requir- 
ing certain facilities for weighing live animals to be provided | 
in markets and fairs, and the amending Act of 1891 gave 
powers to the Board of Agriculture to obtain, under certain 
conditions, and from a certain number of typical places, 
information relating to the number and value of animals so 
weighed. 
By Sections 3 and 4 of the Act of 1891 market authorities 
and live stock auctioneers in the scheduled towns were placed 
under obligation to make returns of the number of animals 
exposed for sale and the number weighed, with the weights 
and prices of these so far as they were able to ascertain them. 
The places first selected for this statistical inquiry were four- 
teen in England and five in Scotland, but in 1898, by the 
addition of Carlisle and Falkirk, the number of returning 
markets was raised to the total of twenty-one, now shown 
on page 538. These places, as will be seen, comprise some of 
the principal live stock markets in the kingdom, and in order 
