Democratic Sentinel, Volume 3, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 August 1879 — THE WORLD’S CATTLE SUPPLY. [ARTICLE]

THE WORLD’S CATTLE SUPPLY.

The Stock of the Great Pastoral Countries. An Euglish paper says: If meat is scarce and dear in Western Europe' such is not the case in other parts of the world, as the following statistics relative to America, Australia, and Africa will show. Uruguay, the population of which by the last census of 1876 was 400,000 souls, possessed at the same time 4,873,924 head of horned cattle and 9,142,155 sheep, but as those figures are token from the returns made by the farmers themselves for the purpose of taxation, M. Yitalba, Comptroller of the State, considers the more accurate numbers would be 6,000,000 and 12,000,000. The Argentine Confederation, far larger in extent, with barely 2,000,000 of inhabitants, had, according to a calculation published at Buenos Ayres in 1875, 13,493,090 animals of the bovine species, of which 5,116,020 w r ere in the province of Buenos Ayres, and 57,546,413 sheep. But, according to thg official announcement in the Argentine section of the exhibition of 1878, the real quantities were 80,000,000 of sheep and 15,000,000 of horned cattle. A vast extent of the southern portion of Brazil, particularly the province of Rio Grande, Bolivia, and portions of Peru on the eastern slopes of the Andes, are also occupied in raising cattle, but the difficulties of procuring definite returns are so great that any estimate made could only be mere guess-work. Turning now to North America, where immense districts are almost wholly pastoral, the figures published in 1872 by Mr. Block showed the existence of 26,693,305 head of cattle, 31,679,300 sheep, and 32,000,000 of pigs. But these numbers have vastly increased since, owing to the extensive trade which has sprung up between England and the United States in meat, both salt and fresh. According to some statistics published by the French Minister of Commerce, Canada possessed in 1876 2,624,299 animals of the bovine race and 3,155,509 of the ovine. The numbers supposed to exist in Australia and New Zealand are 5,995,872 of the former and 61,649,967 of the latter, of which the share of New South Wales is 3,131,013 cattle, 25,629,755 sheep, as well as 173,604 pigs. Finally, England’s enormous colony in the South of Africa is, speaking generally, devoted to raising cattle, and, although no accurate returns are forthcoming, the fact is known that this industry is extending there daily. —English paper.