to home growers can be anything but a temporary expedient which must give way to increasing pressure. Our true policy is to employ our strength on that which will exchange for more than it can produce. The capacity for foreign production shown by the figures already given, forbids the supposition that it is wise to restrict our appropriation of these to our own use. The power which it is also shown us to possess for supplying foreign markets with goods other than food, assures us that it ought to be cultivated and extended.

In the next place it is suggested that a shifting of the burden of taxation from the shoulders of the home producer of food on to those of the community generally, would enable him to stand against foreign competition. If taxation is unequal, and there is sufficient evidence to warrant the fullest inquiry, by all means let the inequality be rectified, but the records of our export trade do not warrant the supposition that it can bear any additional weighting. If land be entitled to relief from taxation, it cannot be met by levying duties upon manufactured articles for home consumption, which must, by raising the price of all, inevitably check their sale abroad; and so diminish the power for payment in the only produce we can offer to other nations. Thus throwing out of employment, and dependent upon the rates, those who now earn their maintenance by our foreign trade.

The third remedy which presents itself is that if producers of food at home cannot supply our wants, and if consumers of other goods abroad will not take our home-made goods, we should send our surplus labour to the fields where food can be produced by ourselves. Tables IIA and IIID show the great disproportion which the acreage and production at home bear to that of other parts of the empire in even that portion of it for which we have returns. Why not then extend cultivation in our own possessions abroad, and there raise up consumers for an additional quantity of our home manufactures? Everything points to the freest exchange between the nations of the world of that which each produces, and it should be matter of intense gratitude that if the world will not yet admit us to free trade with them, we have both land and labour of our own to do without them.

DISCUSSION on Mr. BOURNE'S PAPER.

MAJOR CRAIGIE, in opening the discussion, wished to offer the thanks of the Society to Mr. Bourne for the valuable paper which he had placed before them. There were, however, but few points which in a paper like this could be easily discussed without preparation. No one could doubt the enormous importance of the subject, and the conclusions to be drawn from such investigations. He must own he looked with some little trepidation on the wide range now taken, and the somewhat ambitious flight into a region where the data were so incomplete and unsatisfactory. The labour of such a task as that to which Mr. Bourne had set himself was enormous. He entertained, however, some doubt that they had not got a perfectly satisfactory unit for comparing the products of different parts of the world in taking the pound sterling. The values attributed to the different countries would be to the public mind, despite Mr. Bourne's caution, not a little misleading. The value of the products was given as imported to this the richest country of the world at its ports, and this would by no means be the mean of the values throughout the world generally. Take for instance the figures in Table IIID, where Russia was credited with a production equal to four times the amount per head of the population as against the United Kingdom; such items startled one a little on reading the figures. He was not quite sure how the gap between Tables IIIc and IIID was got over, Table IIID being one of the most important summary tables in the whole paper, since in it the production of all these countries was put side by side. Here the United Kingdom was taken as producing 1507 millions of food per annum. But in Table IIIA the annual value of the grain produce and potatoes in the United Kingdom was taken at nearly 96 millions, which would only leave something like 55 millions annually as the whole yearly value of the annual product of meat, as well as the omitted products of milk, butter, cheese, &c. How had this estimate of 55 millions been arrived at?

Mr. BOURNE said that Table IIIc was a calculation of the value of the existing stock. He had arrived at the difference between the grain and the live stock in the following table by calculating what that amount of existing stock would yield when slaughtered.

Major CRAIGIE said he questioned the total of 150 millions,* and wished to point out that deducting the annual value of the grain, 95 millions, only 55 millions was left as the annual value of the meat produced. Even admitting that dairy produce was not included in the estimate, the proportion of meat must be much too low. According to his (Major Craigie's) recent calculations, the estimated yearly home production of meat was equal to 1,240,000 tons per annum. The value of that meat, if it was taken at anything like 731. or 741. a ton, must be very greatly in excess of the 55 millions mentioned in Mr. Bourne's paper, and therefore he thought he must have conIt will be seen, on reference to the table referred to, IIID, that Mr. Bourne, in deference to Major Craigie's opinion, has taken his estimate for meat somewhat higher.-EDITOR.

siderably under estimated the value of the butcher's meat alone, without taking account of other animal products. He believed that the meat supply alone was nearer 85 millions than 55 millions. He did not propose to enter upon the very interesting calculations with reference to import and export movements which composed part of the paper, but only to insist that, as regarded relative production, there was a fallacy in taking a pound sterling as the unit of comparison. The figures would be to some extent modified if another mode of calculation was adopted. Recurring to what had been said as the aggregate value of the out-turn of the United Kingdom in the way of food, no doubt Sir James Caird's figures which had been quoted in the reference to his (Major Craigie's) paper were taken after a period of very much higher prices than at present; they must be too high for existing circumstances. In the paper he (Major Craigie) read last January, therefore, he proposed to reduce the value of the grain alone produced in this country to something like 60 millions a year, in place of 87 millions, and he gave his reasons for so doing when he read his paper. The difference between Mr. Bourne and himself was thus narrowed, but he was still unable to see how the total with regard to meat could be made up from the data now given. These points would no doubt be explained by Mr. Bourne in his reply; but if his calculations were wrong in the points he referred to, he was afraid they were also wrong in the totals for other countries. If the meat production of England was brought out at only 55 millions, then he was afraid they must be also wrong in the meat supply attributed to other countries, if the proportion annually slaughtered were assumed to be the same. In applying to foreign countries the measure applied to their English stock, estimating the amount of meat produced from a given number of animals, they were in great danger of going wrong. The proportionate number brought to the butcher annually must be totally different in many countries from what it was here, and would throw out, to some extent and in another way, the general figures with regard to animal products. At the present moment, when the question of animal imports was attracting unusual attention, it became their Society very closely to look into the question of the meat consumption of the country in any one year and the sources of their supplies, and he hoped that the paper that Mr. Bourne had so ably placed before them would be the means of stimulating discussion on that very important, but still undecided, point. He had been induced to go lately into such data as were available on this head, and the figures showed that, speaking roughly, 100 pounds of meat were consumed by each unit of the population in the course of the year. If of that 100 pounds 78 pounds, as his own investigations showed, were produced at home, and the remainder imported either alive or dead, those were figures which bore a very important relation to many of the discussions going on at the present time with reference to the importation of animals and the dissemination of disease among our home stock. His own inquiries pointed to something like a home production of meat from cattle, sheep, and pigs equal to 1,240,000 tons yearly, while we had, according to last year's returns, nearly 62,000 tons

of fresh and 170,000 tons of salt meat imported, and living animals in addition, calculated to furnish a further supply of meat equal to 106,000 tons; the total of the country's meat thus reaching 1,578,000 tons, or very nearly the 100 pounds per head to which he had referred; while, if these figures were anywhere near the truth, the relative importance of the sources whence our population were fed was shown by the home supply furnishing 78 pounds to each inhabitant, the foreign dead meat 15 pounds, and the foreign live meat 7 pounds. If they were to go more thoroughly into this question, perhaps some of the data put before them by Mr. Bourne would afford a useful starting point.

Mr. H. MONCREIFF PAUL said that thoroughly agreeing as he did with the able remarks at the commencement and the end of Mr. Bourne's paper, he was sorry to be obliged to follow very much in the wake of Major Craigie, and rather take exception to the basis upon which some of the calculations had been made. Mr. Bourne had guarded himself by saying that he could not pretend to anything like accuracy in his statistics, but this proviso, notwithstanding the tables as given, might prove very misleading. For instance, in Table IA, showing "the quantities of grain, potatoes, and other agricultural produce grown annually in the United Kingdom and Colonies," the returns for the United Kingdom were taken for the year 1882, while those for the Australasian Colonies were for 1880; and yet those two years were put together in one table as if they were returns for the same period. The same remark applied with regard to the live stock in Table IIA, that for the United Kingdom being given for the year 1882, and for the Colonies for 1880. Passing to Section 5, "Estimated Values of Produce," the index unit being taken as a pound sterling, they found in consequence on reference to Table IIIc, that while the cattle in the United Kingdom were put down at 137. a head, cattle in the Australasian colonies were also put at 137. a head, whereas the value of cattle in these colonies was less by 80 per cent. than in England. Taking as a further example the case of Russia, her sheep were estimated at over 21. a head, or far in excess of their value in that country. Turning to the Tables IVA and VA, giving respectively the values of food products exported and imported, and taking as a type case the returns for New South Wales, it was found that the imports were 2.62 millions, and the exports 106 mil. lions, showing an excess of imports according to these calculations of 1.56 millions. But if reference were made to the actual statistical returns of the colony, it would be found that for the year 1881 the imports of New South Wales were 487 millions, and her exports at 141 millions, leaving a surplus for excess of imports of 342 millions instead of 1.56 millions. The comparison of these tables with the actual statistics furnished by the different countries seemed therefore to point to the conclusion that they were resting upon a wrong basis, and would require modification. He believed the secret of the error lay in this, that the principle of computation dealt with in the case of imports and exports in order to reconcile values had not been applied. In order to do so they should

VOL. XLVI. PART III.

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follow the course adopted as indicated by Mr. Bourne in the United States, of assessing imports by taking the value at the point of production, and adding thereto the cost of transit. If that same system had been adopted in the tables before them more accurate data might have been obtained. Mr. Bourne had not been able to supply statistics with regard to the wheat produced in India. That was a very important point, because India was becoming daily a more important factor in producing wheat for herself and for the rest of the world. The figures for 1881 of the produce of wheat in India showed 212 million bushels, or 26 million quarters, from an acreage of some 19 millions, showing a very fair yield per acre. The question of wheat production was exceedingly important, and he was glad that Mr. Bourne had given such prominence to it. France in this respect occupied an abnormal position, for whereas in the year 1882 there were obtained by Great Britain only 64 million quarters of wheat from France, in 1878 201 millions were imported thence, showing that latterly bad harvests had affected her as they had other producing countries. The question of meat importation in the shape of refrigerated animal food was one which was coming before them more prominently than ever. The problem had now been successfully solved, and the process could be extended all over the world, that is to say, that wherever there were countries which could produce animal food in excess, it might be brought by means of refrigeration to those countries which required more food, and in that way a gap might be filled up which England felt very strongly. While the trade was at present in its infancy, the day was near at hand when the annual supplies of Australasian mutton would exceed half a million of carcases. Such imports would tend to place a wholesome check on the upward movement in values, of which there was abundant evidence in the butcher's bills so reluctantly paid by the British householder.

Mr. R. HAMILTON referring to the question of some common denominator for the various items which had to be brought together, said that though in temperate climates at all events the crops of cereals were secured year by year that was by no means the case as regards the supply of meat. Not only the bulk of the animals but the time required to bring them to maturity was a most important factor in the calculation. Scientific breeding and rearing had done very much in this respect within the last few decades. Perhaps Major Craigie could get from the Royal Agricultural Society the data from which a common unit of the food value of animals could be deduced. Even with grain in many parts of India a “wet and a "dry" crop could be raised within the year, and this donble annual supply was one reason why Oude and Bengal could support so large a population without suffering the extreme of poverty. With regard to the question of free trade, a long series of bad harvests had subjected the country to a most extreme test, but the stain had been borne with a most marvellous facility. He believed that under any circumstances short of a war of an enormous magnitude, their food supply as regards the present generation was not only secure but could be attained with great facility. The ease