THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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industry more or less successful in augmenting'the quantity,it may happen sometimes even to fall, sometimes to continuethe same in very different periods of improvement, andsometimes to rise more or less in the same period.

There are some sorts of rude produce which nature hasrendered a kind of appendages to other sorts ; so that thequantity of the one which any country can afford, is neces-sarily limited by that of the other. The quantity of woolor of raw hides, for example, which any country can afford,is necessarily limited by the number of great and smallcattle that are kept in it. The state of its improvement, andthe nature of its agriculture, again necessarily determinethis number.

The same causes, which, in the progress of improvement,gradually raise the price of butcher’s meat, should have thesame effect, it may be thought, upon the prices of wool andraw hides, and raise them too nearly in the same proportion.It probably would be so, if in the rude beginnings of im-provement the market for the latter commodities was con-fined within as narrow bounds as that for the former. Butthe extent of their respective markets is commonly extremelydifferent.

The market for butcher’s meat is almost everywhere con-fined to the country which produces it. Ireland , and someparts of British America, indeed, carry on a considerabletrade in salt provisions; but they are, I believe, the onlycountries in the commercial world which do so, or whichexport to other countries any considerable part of theirbutcher’s meat.

The market for wool and raw hides, on the contrary, isin the rude beginnings of improvement very seldom con-fined to the country which produces them. They can easilybe transported to distant countries, wool without any pre-paration, and raw hides with very little; and as they arethe materials of many manufactures, the industry of othercountries may occasion a demand for them, though thatof the country which produces them might not occasionany.

In countries ill cultivated, and therefore but thinly inha-bited, the price of the wool and the hide bears always amuch greater proportion to that of the whole beast, than inthe countries where, improvement and population being fur-ther advanced, there is more demand for butcher’s meat.