Parliamentary Publications. 



Ill 



of the returns has on the present occasion been augmented 

 by information not previously available for several countries, 

 while details based upon more recent inquiries have brought 

 some of the foreign statistics down to a later date. Diagram 

 maps, one showing the grouping of the counties of Great 

 Britain in agricultural divisions, and another indicating the 

 relative density of the flocks of the country per i,ooo acres 

 of total area, are given in the volume. 



It is pointed out that the schedules issued to occupiers of 

 land in Great Britain on which the annual returns are based 

 have been simplified, with the result of securing greater 

 convenience and greater accuracy in the information fur- 

 nished in several directions in which there had been pre- 

 viously some misunderstanding on the] part of the occupiers. 

 The total cultivated area of Great Britain, that is the surface 

 returned by the occupiers as consisting of arable land or of 

 permanent pasture, excluding the rough grazings, is given 

 as 32,520,000 acres in 1897, an apparent reduction of 42,000 

 acres below that of 1896. Part of this diminution is, how- 

 ever, due, in this as in former years, to the continuous with- 

 drawal of land from cultivation for building and other pur- 

 poses, and part to the more accurate classification of grass 

 lands as permanent pasture or rough grazings in certain 

 counties. 



The chief feature to which Major Craigie draws attention 

 in his report on the tables is the addition shown in 1897 

 to the area of arable land, and the apparent diminu- 

 tion of that returned as permanent pasture. Slight checks 

 to the downward movement of the area under the plough had 

 been recorded in one or two years of the last quarter of the 

 century, but not until 1897 has so material a change appeared 

 in the direction opposite to that which has so long been 

 current, there being 171,000 acres more returned as arable, 

 and 214,000 acres less shown as permanent grass. These 

 changes are only in part due to the ploughing up of pasture 

 land, as there is a large real or apparent addition to the surface 

 returned as under clover and temporary grasses. In spite 

 of an extension of 195,000 acres under wheat alone in 1897 

 the corn crops as a whole show a net increase of about 



