though of more recent date, is observable in most other European 

 countries. 



The distinction between urban and rural sanitary districts fur- 

 nishes an approximately accurate measure of urban and rural po- 

 pulation, and is adopted for this purpose in the Census Reports. 

 The Census returns of 1901 showed 77 per cent of the population 

 of England and Wales living in urban districts, of this 77 per cent, 

 46 lived in cities having a population of over 50 ooo inhabitants, 

 22 in cities of 10 to 50 ooo inhabitants, and 9 in villages or small 

 towns with less than 10 ooo, thus only 23 per cent of the popu- 

 lation were living in rural districts. 



The progress of the tendency towards urban aggregation is 

 shown by the fact that the population of the urban areas was 

 50 per cent of the population in 1851, 68 per cent in 1881, and 

 77 per cent in 1901. 



The agricultural population, as a whole, has declined in the 

 half-century by over 30 per cent, and the aggregate number of la- 

 bourers (male and female), as distinct from farmers and graziers, 

 by as much as 64 per cent. The area of arable land has also de- 

 clined, while the area of pasture land has increased; but the de- 

 cline in the former class of land has occured at a slower rate 

 than tht decrease in the number of agricultural labourers and farm 

 servants employed on it: in other words, an economy of labour 

 has been effected, largely by means of labour-saving machinery, 

 over and above the reduction of labour consequent on the decrease 

 of land under cultivation. There is, however, some reason to be- 

 lieve that prior to 1870 a certain proportion of the agricultural 

 population was actually superfluous, and that the amount of labour 

 required in agriculture was insufficient to provide permanent em- 

 ployment for the existing agricultural population. 



On the other hand, concurrently with the decline in agricul- 

 tural labour, there has been a substantial rise in agricultural wages, 

 which were in 1907 56 per cent higher than they were in 1850. 



E. DOMMEN. Essay on British Agriculture. (Monographic 

 agricole de la Grande-Bretagne. Paris, J. B. Bailliere, 1908, 

 p. 68). 



A short essay on British agriculture. The crop yields of Great 

 Britain are compared with those of other countries. 



The following table shows that only Belgium and the Nether- 



