388 



Reports on Foreign Crops. 



The average quality was returned in November at 81*3, 

 which shows a considerable recovery from the October 

 report, when it was placed at 61 -6. 



The hay crop is above the average, being the highest ot 

 the last five years. The yield is estimated i -42 tons per acre. 



With regard to apples, in the month of October it was 

 stated that there were few localities from which the reports 

 did not show a further decline, and even where the crops are 

 otherwise favourable the fruit is generally undersized, and in 

 many cases of inferior quality. 



Crops in Russia. 



According to a despatch from Mr. Michell, Her Majesty's- 

 Consul General at St. Petersburg, the Section of Rural 

 Economy and Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture has. 

 issued a Report, founded on communications received from 

 6,700 private correspondents from different parts of the 

 Empire, on the approximate yield of the harvest of 1897. 



The general deductions arrived at are that the yield of the 

 principal cereals in European Russia was a bad one. The 

 rye and wheat crops gave poor returns in the greater part of 

 the black-soil provinces, this being the case even in those 

 districts which are generally favoured by the most abundant 

 harvests. The localities in which the yields were lowest, and 

 in which the rye gathered was below the average (in some 

 cases as much as 50 per cent.) were the provinces of Kursk, 

 Orel, Tula, Riazan, Tamboff, Nijni-Novgorod, Samara,. 

 Voronej, Saratov, Penza, Astrakan, Bessarabia, the Taurida, 

 the Don Country, Kharkov, Tchernigov, Perm, Moscow, 

 and Grodno. In the remaining portions of the Empire the 

 yield of rye was either an average one or above the 

 average ; only in a few districts of the provinces of 

 Yaroslav, Tver, and of some northern provinces was the rye 

 crop good. 



Autumn sown wheat also produced either unsatisfactory or 

 bad crops in the provinces in which it is generally cultivated, 

 and it is anticipated that the general harvest will be consi- 



