THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1907. THE WORLD'S SHEEP FLOCKS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8339, 23 January 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23, 1907. THE WORLD'S SHEEP FLOCKS.

It has been contended by some | authorities that among the causes contributing to the present h,igh prices of wool is the diminution of the sheep flocks in the world. This, contention receives strong support I from certain statistics furnished by| Mr Bennett, an American authority/ on textiles, who has been investigate ing, in the records of the United States Department of Agriculture, the strength of the world's ■ flocks. His conclusions are startling, even to those who' realised that,, from one* cause and 'another, a process of diminution was going oil, for he estimates that in the ten years between 1895 and 1905 the number, of sheep in the world decreased by little less than seventy-two millions—that is from 526,867,000 to 455,047,000. What a trifle, in com- j parison with such a huge total, appears New Zealand's twenty millions. In Mr Bennett's tables Australia shows the greatest decline in the decade, from 120,000,000 to rather less.than 75,000,000, the diminution in that one country accounting for neai'ly two-thirds of the whole and reducing Australia to the third place in the list instead of the second, that being taken by South America. But in none of the great divisions of the globe was there an increase, and a more detailed table, .showing the "number of sheep in the principal sheep-raising countries at different dates indicates that the decrease has, in a number of cases, been continuous for a long period. The number of sheep in Australia,

which in 1891 stood at practicallyone hundred and twenty-five millions, dropped by 25 per cent, in ten years, and went on dropping until three years ago, since when a recovery has taken place to some extent. It is interesting to note that in 1905 the United States had four millions fewer sheep than fifteen years before, that by 1904 the Cape had lost five millions in thirteen years, while the Argentine, though two millions worse off than four years previously, had four millions more than nine years before. The drop of five millions in the Orange River Colony between 1890 and 1903 no doubt largely occurred during the end of the period when the war was in progress. Great Britain, Ireland, India, France, Spain, Russia (apparently), and Norway all show decreases over various periods, while in the forty years between 1860 and 1900 German flocks fell from 28 millions to one-third of that number.