Agricultural Statlstics, 1905. 



[AUG., 



when the owner-farmed land was returned as forming 1 5 per cent, 

 of the whole, the remaining 85 per cent, being occupied by 

 tenants in the more customary form of British farming. The 

 circumstances of the earlier years of agricultural depression 

 doubtless tended to throw considerable areas of untenanted 

 holdings on their owners' hands, and in some of the arable 

 districts, the proportion of owner-farmed land was much 

 higher. The yearly tables suggest a slight but somewhat 

 continuous reduction in the extent of owner-farmed land, which 

 may not improbably be due to some recovery in agricultural 

 prospects. The English average had fallen from i^'g per cent, 

 in 1888 to 14-9 in 1895, and for the year 1905 it stood at 

 13 per cent, only, while nearly everywhere the county average 

 had declined. The group of counties, viz., Surrey, Sussex, 

 Berkshire, and Hampshire, which in 1888 showed the highest 

 percentage of owner-farmed holdings, 25 to 35 per cent., still 

 stands high in this respect, and the first-named county has now 

 even a higher percentage than before. 



The tendency in each of the agricultural divisions of Great 

 Britain is, however, towards a reduction of farm land occupied 

 by its owners, and though the movement reveals great differences 

 in its rate of progress. Major Craigie considers it may be 

 attributed to a readier disposition to hire agricultural land than 

 prevailed seventeen years ago. 



The system of the direct collection of returns of market prices 

 by specially appointed officers of the Board, which was started 

 in 1904, was further developed in 1905, and some slight changes 

 were made in the list of markets from which returns are obtained. 

 Several tables of prices based on these returns appear in the 

 annual volume for the first time. 



Major Craigie also discusses in some detail the figures which 

 are available from foreign countries relating to the area of wheat, 

 and also as to the number of live stock. In speaking of the 

 latter subject, he observes that in its animal wealth the agricul- 

 ture of the British Empire, with its Indian possessions, has a 

 pre-eminence which it does not even share with its great wheat- 

 producing competitors, for it very conspicuously distances them 

 all, as indeed it does in its human population. No other flag 

 covers, as does that of our country, a herd of 120,000,000 head 



