no 



Parliamentary Publications. 



The prices of grain in 1 896 are compared with the official 

 data extending back for 125 years, and in averages for five- 

 yearly periods since 1866. Quotations have been brought 

 together respecting the prices of meat from such sources as 

 are available, and these are examined and compared in like 

 manner both for single recent years and for five-yearly 

 periods over the last thirty years. 



The general report also reviews in detail the growth of 

 imported agricultural produce, and compares this with the 

 changes in population and the advance of the estimated rates 

 of consumption of meat and of wheat in this country so far as 

 data available for comparison exist in the past twenty years. 

 The closing pages of the report on this occasion are 

 devoted to a more detailed examination than has been pre- 

 viously attempted of the parallel changes occurring during 

 the same interval at home and abroad in the recorded acre- 

 age of wheat and numbers of live-stock, in those countries 

 and colonies whence complete series of official data have been 

 placed at the disposal of the Board and embodied in these 

 annual returns of successive years. 



Board of Agriculture, — Returns as to the Number and Size of 

 Agricultural Holdi?tgs in Great Britain in the year 1895, 

 [C. — 8343.] Price 4!^. 



This volume contains the special returns which have been 

 prepared with a view to exhibit the number, size, and 

 distribution of Agricultural Holdings in Great Britain in 

 1895, together with Major Craigie's explanatory report 

 thereon. The acreage which is accounted for in the present 

 return is, in every case, that returned in the year 1895 as under 

 " crop, bare fallow, or grass," and it does not, therefore, 

 include the rough grazings attached to many farms in hilly 

 districts, whereof the surface is only approximately estimated 

 from year to year. 



This area was farmed in 520,106 holdings, the distribution 

 of which is shown in the tables in eight classes from i acre 

 to over 1,000 acres. Of the whole, 23 per cent, in number, 

 but little over i per cent, in acreage, are of the type of i acre 



