290 



The Grain Harvest. 



A comparison with the harvest of 1895 would give much 

 more satisfactory results, for in that year the yield of wheat 

 was estimated at only 26*23 bushels per acre, and the total 

 produce from the small area of 1,417,000 acres then under 

 the crop in Great Britain stood at no more than 37,176,000 

 bushels, or 4,647,000 quarters against the 6,864,000 quarters 

 of this season. 



The county figures of the yield of the wheat crop of 1 897 

 will in due course appear in the completed Agricultural 

 Returns, but it may be stated here, in advance of these, that 

 an examination of the results in the groups of contiguous 

 counties treated as possessing certain common agricul- 

 tural features, which have been frequently quoted in con- 

 nection with Produce Statistics, has shown that the highest 

 estimated yield for any one of the eight sub-divisions of 

 England was returned from the group formed by the counties 

 of Norfolk, Lincoln, and the East Riding of York, where 

 31*37 bushels per acre was obtained ; while the lowest yield, 

 26-26 bushels, was returned from the extreme south-western 

 group of Somerset, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. In the 

 group of eastern counties lying south of Norfolk and north of 

 the Thames, which contains nearly one-fourth of the English 

 wheat acreage, the estimated yield per acre was 28*23 

 bushels. 



This figure was scarcely exceeded by the group of south- 

 eastern counties lying south of the Thames where the average 

 stood at 28*54 bushels. In the group of Midland counties 

 stretching northward from Berkshire to the Lincolnshire 

 boundary the average yield is given as just below 28 bushels, 

 the west midland group showing about a bushel more per 

 acre, or nearly 29 bushels, a figure which was exceeded in 

 the northern group. 



The yield of the barley crop of 1 897 is given in the estimate 

 recently published as having been exactly equivalent to the 

 average of the ten years 1887-96, or 32*82 bushels per acre; 

 the English crop alone was slightly under the average, but 

 the Welsh crop was nearly a bushel, and the Scotch crop 

 rather more than a bushel, in excess of the decennial 

 estimates. Compared with 1 896 the acreage under barley in 



