362 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



this unfair comparison ; it comes from liaste and want of considera- 

 tion. Experts in crop statistics lind no difficulty in making accurate 

 comparisons. Mr. Ellison, of Liverpool, the commercial authority 

 as to the cotton movement, has said that he is always able to deter- 

 mine quite accurately the extent of the cotton crop from^our record 

 of averages of condition ; and yet cotton is the most ditncult of all 

 the crops to forecast, because it is a plant that retains in cultivation 

 something of its natural perennial character, and continues to grow, 

 blossom, and fruit till it is destroyed by frost, the aggregate result 

 thus depending on the length of the season. 



We answer the inquiry as to what 100 means in reports of condi- 

 tion, that in a county where a full crop of corn is 30 bushels, 100 

 means a prospect for a crop of 30 bushels ; 90, an expectation of 27 

 bushels ; 70, of 21 bushels; and in similar proportion with other per- 

 centages. If the county is one in which 20 bushels is a full crop, 90 

 means a prospect of 18 bushels. There are districts where 40 bushels 

 may be taken as a full crop ; in such lands 75 would mean 30 bushels. 

 In wheat there are regions where 8 bushels may be indicated by 100, 

 and other districts where it may promise 20 bushels. In these in- 

 stances 75 would mean 6 and 15 bushels, respectively. 



The equivalent value of 100 in a general crop average must, there- 

 fore, be calculated with painstaking accuracy and thoroughness from 

 the local equivalent values which are elements of this national aver- 

 age. Should the acreage of one year contain a larger proportion of 

 poor lands than another, 100 would mean less in consequence. It 

 seems almost trivial to dwell upon a point that a school-boy in pri- 

 mary mathematics should plainly see; yet there are persons who 

 cannot apparently understand why 100 should not mean as many 

 bushels for wheat as for corn, or why it should have a different 

 measure in different States. Occasionally a newspaper writer, with 

 only slightly bucolic leaning, meets with the same imaginary diffi- 

 culty, and proceeds to criticise what he fails to understand through 

 a fault all his own. 



Some have suggested a report in bushels, tons, bales, &c. Aside 

 from the incongruity of reporting results of the harvest, when only 

 condition of an immature crop is intended, it would be impracticable. 

 The direct estimates of yield per acre, even when made at the time 

 of the harvest, are usually inaccurate, being almost invariably too 

 high, whether from pride in local fertility or from undue prominence 

 given to the areas of the best cultivators. There is less of inaccu- 

 racy, less of unconscious bias, in the percentage returns of condition 

 on the basis of perfect healthfulness and medium growth. The ex- 

 perience of this office is opposed to the substitution of bushels, &c., 

 for percentage of full condition in the reports of the status of grow- 

 ing crops. 



THE OLD-FASHIONED PLAN. 



The old method, the newspaper plan of crop-reporting in vogue so 

 long and still practiced in some quarters, has little of system or 

 science to recommend it; yet it assumes to have a standard of com- 

 parison which is an "average" crop. Really an average crop is a 

 true average of the actual crops of a series of years. Ten years 

 ought to suffice as a basis of average, though probably a truer aver- 

 age would require fifteen or twenty. In this Department the average 

 of any ten years is found to be very close to that of any other similar 



