The Wairarapa Daily. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1889. English Prices for Fat Stock.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 3118, 1 February 1889, Page 2

The Wairarapa Daily. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1889. English Prices for Fat Stock.

An English exchange gives the following -■ interesting particulars of a recent sale of fat stool; in one of the northern counties: "The annual Christmas sale of fat stock, the property of the Marquis of Londonderry, was held on Thursday at Dawdon Pield Farm, Seaham Harbor, when 80 head of cattle and 821 head of sheep were offered for public competition. None of the lots were overweighted with fat, and all will doubtless prove, when hilled, splendid cutters, Prices were thought to have njled high, the price of beef at the finish of the sale being computed at (Is Cd per stone, some animals indeed being set down at 10s per stone, Mr Whittaker, of York, paid the top price of the sale, giving 140 5s for a blue cross polled steer. He also gave the next highest price of £37 5s for a cross kyloe steer, Following these prices, Mr Blenkinsop, of Newcastle, gave £34 for a very excellent roan 3horthorn steer. The total sum realised for cattle amounted to ,61,804, or an average of £24 per head. The sheep, also, fetched good prices, best mutton being calculated to have made as high as Did per lb, and a few pons of Cheviot ewes 8d per lb, The total sum received for shepp was .£OOS 18s Gd, showing an average of'a little under £8 each," It will be observed that the eighty head of cattle and the three hundred odd sheep realised a sum of nearly three thousand pounds. Had these animals been placed in Messrs Lowes and lorns' sale yards at Masterion they would have fetohed perhaps a sum of about six hundred pounds. The difference between three thou* sand and six hundred pounds represents the gulpli between the value of meat in New Zealand and in England. It has been contended that tho price of mutton and.beef in England is frequently so low tt«t our frozen meat ,capnot bp sent there at a profit, but records su.cji a? that we have quoted disprove any fl'ontejjtioii of this clwacter. Beef and mutton here, of a quality equal to that which was obtained from fed Londonderry's farm, is worth about three-halfpence per pound. In England yiider ordinary conditions it might be expected to realise eightpence per pound, Raping twopence per pound is required to cover charges for freezing, exporting, and ngenoy, there is left a margin for profit whlob ought to represent something like fourpence halfpenny

per pound, .Tliia fourpence halfpenny, constitutes t-lie intermediate profits, the earnings of the mysterious middle ■ men, of whom so much is said and bo little is known. One thing is tolerably certain, and that'is that meat iu New Zealand should he worth something like half the wholesale value of meat of a similar quality in London, If first class beef and mutton fetches eightpeiice per pound in the old country, it ought to be worth fourponce in v Wellington. ■ The ..present relative prices in Great Britain and New Zealand are absurdly anomalous, and time'must necessarily approximate them. Ultimately the price of meat in New Zealand will be absolutely ruled by the London market rate, and the latter will certainly not be six times the amount of the former,