THE LOSSES OF CATTLE IN TRANSIT.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Your correspondents are very much mistaken; there is more hardship involved in the crossing of a cattle ship from • Cork to Bristol than there is in the case of a dozen Atlantic liners. I had occasion to collect the statistics from official sources for an article which can be read in the Fortnightly Review for May, 1891, "The Trans-Atlantic Cattle Trade," since when ships have so much improved that these losses may now be regarded as quite negligible. I should be surprised if they average to-day one-quarter of one per cent.
In that article I was able to say :— "Of the recognized steamship lines engaged in this Canadian trade last season, the Allan and the Beaver lost one beast in each 266. The Donaldson line in eight years have lost 641 out of a total of 82,000, and deducting the exceptional losses on three of their ships during November hurricanes, the monthly rate is reduced to one per 300, chiefly resulting from an illness known as 'red-water.'" And I added this :—
"The hundred cattle which I shipped down the Great Lakes from Duluth to Deptford were weighed on leaving their stalls at Superior City and averaged 1,348 lb., and Messrs. Roberts and Prichard, the Deptford salesmen, write to the Times of August 4th, 1885, that these cattle had ' dressed ' 780 lb. of beef, which, being nearly 60 per cent, of their gross weight at Superior, shows that notwithstanding a voyage of 4,000 miles, the cattle had lost little OT no flesh. The prices realized at Deptford in an abnormally bad market was actually. Messrs. Roberts and Prichard declared, a halfpenny per lb. more than prime Chicago beef sold for the came day in the same Deptford market."
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