ANNUAL AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS. 



ENGLISH, PRUSSIAN, AND AMERICAN MODES OF ESTIMATING THEIR ANNUAL 

 AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTIONS. 



The commerce of the world is so dependent on agricultural productions, 

 that to ascertain their annual amount has become an object of the greatest 

 utility. Nor less dependent on them are manufactures, and all the industry- 

 employed therein. The textile material, as cotton, wool, and flax, is essen- 

 tial to the great clothing manufactories, and the animal, cereal, and vege- 

 table food to sustain the health and strength of their operatives. A scarcity 

 of these, or their abundance, affects the exchanges of the world. In view of 

 this absolute dependence on agricultural production, the nations of the earth, 

 especially those like England, which do not supply their own wants by their 

 own agriculture, or like Prussia and the United States, which largely export 

 agricultural products to the manufacturing nations, are forming plans to 

 ascertain the yield of their annual harvests. 



The modes adopted have several objects in view. One, as the decennial 

 census of the United States, aims to ascertain the general progress of the 

 nation and its direction. Another, as the fifth-year census of Massachusetts, 

 has the same object in view, but to determine these at shorter intervals. A 

 third mode is seen in the annual censuses of several of the States, as of Ohio, 

 Iowa, Kansas, and California, which, to the objects already named, add the 

 additional one of affecting the course of agricultural and manufacturing- 

 industry by pointing out wherein lies its excess or deficiency. A fourth one 

 goes yet further, and endeavors to estimate the amount of the crops before 

 they bave'passed from the hands of the producer, that he may reap the just 

 rewards of his toil — a price greater or less, as the annual production may 

 be small or gi'eat. It seeks not only to show the general progress and direc- 

 tion of agricultural industry, but the market values of its productions. To 

 show this last mode, as adopted in Great Britain, Prussia, and the United 

 States, is the purpose of this article, 



1. Great Britain. — In this nation, where agriculture has attained such 

 high perfection, no mode of ascertaining its product, established by law, 

 exists. The farmers of England oppose it, whilst those of Scotland favor it. 

 Attempts have been made in Parliament to establish one, but as yet unsuc- 

 cessfully. Their only result has been to elicit the reasons of this hostility of 

 the English farmers, which, so far as we have seen them, are refuted by ex- 

 perience here. But in the absence of a national mode, the Mark Lane Ex- 

 press has endeavored to supply the want of it by its own enterprise. We 

 therefore refer to its plan as the English mode. 



In its issue of February 8, 1864, we find its report of the cereal crops for 

 1863 of wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes, and in that of February 22 for 

 the crops of beans, peas, turnips, and mangolds. To exhibit the plan adopted 

 by the Express we take its introductory remarks, and its return of the first- 

 named crops for the county or shire of Devon, and that of the last-named 

 for the county of Bedford. 



