60 Chronicles of Science. | Jan., 
robbery falls heavily upon the poor. If the results thus obtained 
represent the average truth, then one milk dealer out of every ten 
is an honest man! We hear with pleasure that a company is 
being started in Switzerland for the preservation of milk in the 
form of cakes, and we are told on good authority that such cakes, 
dissolved in England, produce beautiful rich milk. 
During the recent autumnal meetings of local agricultural 
societies, the subject of agricultural education, including that of the 
future tenant-farmer as well as that of the future agricultural 
labourer, has occupied attention. Members of both Houses of Par- 
liament, and landlords as well as tenant-farmers, have concurred in 
urging the importance of instructing boys in the principles of the 
art by which they are to be maintained in after-life ; and whether it 
were Mr. Read, M.P., addressing agricultural labourers at North 
Walsham, or Colonel Kingscote, M.P., addressing a farmer’s club in 
Gloucestershire, or Earl Spencer and Earl Leicester speaking at an 
agricultural meeting in Norfolk, the advantages of technical edu- 
cation were not only admitted by them but insisted on. It is in 
accordance with this opinion that the educational efforts of the Eng- 
lish agricultural body are for the future to be confined to the pro- 
motion of the strictly professional branches of an agricultural 
education. 
A preliminary statement issued by the Board of Trade, antici- ” 
pating a fuller report which has yet to appear, announces that 
there were in England and Wales in corn crops of all kinds this 
year, 7,941,578 acres, against 7,921,244 acres returned in 1866; 
and in Scotland, 1,367,012 acres, against 1,566,540 acres last year. 
The land under wheat is returned for England and Wales at 
3,255,917 acres, against 3,275,293 acres in 1866 ; and for Scotland, 
as 115,118 acres, against 110,101. ‘The number of cattle in Eng- 
land and Wales is 4,017,799, an increase of about 159,000 within 
the year; and in Scotland, 979,170, an increase of 40,000. Sheep 
are returned for England and Wales at 22,097,286, an increase of 
nearly 6,000,000 over the previous return ; but this is owing to the 
return for 1866 having been required before lambing time, for the 
purpose of the Cattle Plague inquiry. There were 6,893,600 sheep 
in Scotland at the date of the iquiry this year. 
Among the noteworthy agricultural incidents of the past quarter 
we may record here the prices reached at a public sale of shorthorn 
cattle, chiefly yearlings, imported from the United States. Animals 
of the pure “Duchess” family of shorthorns had been purchased in 
England ten or fifteen years ago by American breeders, and now 
their surplus stock are being returned to us, and eight sold by Mr. 
Strafford at Windsor the other day, averaged 408/. 3s. 9d. a-piece ; 
a young heifer reaching the extraordinary price of 700 guineas! 
