From the experience already gained of this year's harvest, Mr.
Caird estimates that the wheat crop is fully 20 per cent. below the average. The fine weather of July and August improved the quality greatly, but it could not altogether repair the mischief -done by a bad seed-time and by the frosts and east winds of the
r---early summer. The out-turn is, therefore, very short. Mr. Caird esti- mates our present consumption of wheat at 23,000,000 quarters in the year, and he comes to the conclusion that the crop of 1.876 will -yield no more than ten million quarters, or barely 43.5 per cent. We shall at this reckoning require thirteen million quarters from the stock left over last yearend from foreign countries. At existing prices, this will cost the country ever £30,000,000 sterling. So far as the increased import is necessitated by thinness of the home crop, the augmented purchases from abroad are, of course, pure loss. But where the decrease of our home production is due, as it largely is, to diminution in the breadth of land sown, the country may be a gainer, not a loser,—for the crop substituted may be more profitable. Indeed, the largeness of the import and its augmentation every year prove that wheat can be grown more cheaply abroad than at home.
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