434 The Potato and Hay crops of 1897. 



reached only 505,000 acres as against 564,000 acres in 1896. 

 The average yield per acre in 1897 was, however, a still more 

 important factor in the reduction, as it was not only less by 

 over a ton per acre than in the immediately preceding year, 

 but less by 16 cwts. per acre than the average crop of potatoes 

 which has been lifted in Great Britain in the ten years 1887-96 

 inclusive. 



The acreage under potatoes has fluctuated considerably in 

 Great Britain in the period for which produce returns are 

 available : from a maximum of 590,000 acres in 1888 to 

 504,000 acres in 1 894, when the area returned as under the 

 crop was almost identical with that now shown for 1897. 

 The average yield per acre, however, was 5*53 tons in 1894, 

 while this was reduced to only 5*17 tons per acre in 1897, a 

 yield which is even slightly under that of 1888, the season 

 in which the largest area was devoted to the potato crop and 

 the smallest yield per acre was recorded. The estimated yield 

 in Wales and in Scotland in 1 897 would appear by the above 

 figures to have been less than in England, and although 

 there are, as usual, a few counties where the estimates are 

 above the average, it will be found, when the complete figures 

 for counties are available, that the decline in production was 

 a very general and wide-spread feature of the season. 



If the results of the potato crop ot 1897 were thus 

 disappointing, the estimates of the yield of hay in Great 

 Britain were on the contrary good. For clover hay, including 

 that cut from artificial grasses, the average crop is given, as 

 the accompanying figures show, at about a hundredweight 

 and a half per acre over a ten years' average yield ; while, 

 compared with the crop of 1896, and despite some de- 

 crease in the large Scotch estimates of the preceding season,^ 

 it is nearly 5 cwts. per acre above the yield of Great 

 Britain as a whole in that year, the English excess over the 

 crop of the immediately preceding year being upwards of 



6 cwts. per acre, and that of the Welsh counties more than 



7 cwts. 



The acreage reserved for hay from clover and rotation 

 grasses was 2,286,000 acres against 2,172,000 acres in 1896, 



