532 PRICES OF LIVE STOCK. 

to fairly represent the general movements of prices the list 
also includes places representing the characteristic trade of 
smaller markets. The number of live stock exposed for sale 
at the scheduled places necessarily varies from year to year. 
The total of horned cattle shown has ranged from a million 
tc a million and a quarter head. The number of sheep 
exposed for sale has varied from 4,194,000 to 4,855,000 
during the eight years, and that of pigs from 139,000 to 
455,000. But it is obvious from the infrequent reference 
to weight in the sale of either of the last two descriptions 
of live stock, that the weighbridge has as yet too restricted a 
use to enable reliable comparative statistics of the current 
prices of sheep or of pigs to be obtained. Comments on the 
new basis of price records, secured by the legislation of 1891, 
are therefore necessarily confined to the case of horned cattle. 
Although the public weighing of farm stock in Great 
Britain has increased much less rapidly than the more 
enthusiastic advocates of the iegislation of 1887 and 1891 antici- 
pated, the returns for the past eight years indicate a measure 
of progress in the application of the weighbridge to the sale 
of horned stock, which, if slow, has been steady, The following 
statement gives the number of cattle entering the markets, 
with the number and proportion of those returned as having - 
been weighed either before or after sale :— 




| Proportion of Number 
Years. Number Entering. | Number Weighed. Weighed to Number 
| - Entering. 
Per: Gent 
1893 1,219,208 92,492 7°59 
1894 1,203,533 96, 344 S‘ol 
1895 1,186,149 | 100,033 8°43 
1896 1,000,014 109,184 9°93 
1897 | 1,115,183 111,767 10°02 
1898 1,263,991 138,652 10°97 
1899 1,236,091 139,482 11°28 
1900 | 1,187,603 I41,611 II'Q2 


The number returned as weighed in 1900 is thus not only 
absolutely larger than in any preceding year, but also 
In a distinctly greater proportion than before to the number 
entering the markets. 
