H4 



PARLIAMENTARY PUBLICATIONS. 



Board of Agriculture. — Agricultural Returns for Great 

 Britain, 1898. [C. 9304.] Price is. 5<i 



This annual volume, comprising* 255 pages of tables, in 

 addition to an explanatory report, completes and amplifies 

 the information already published by instalments, either 

 separately or in this Journal, as to the acreage and produce 

 of crops, and the numbers of live stock, in Great Britain last 

 year, with further data for Ireland, the Isle of Man, and the 

 Channel Islands, and summaries for the whole of the United 

 Kingdom. The statistics of 1898 are the subject of various 

 analytical tables, and comparative figures covering the period 

 since 1 87 1 are given for each division of the United Kingdom. 

 Other statements supply detailed information of the 

 trade in live stock with Ireland, the supply of meat and 

 produce at the London markets, the prices of corn and meat, 

 the quantities and values of the imports and exports of agri- 

 cultural produce, together with the available statistics of 

 agriculture in the colonies and in foreign countries. 



The information as to crops and live stock in Great 

 Britain was abstracted from 519,762 schedules, representing 

 the holdings of all persons occupying more than one acre, 

 and 13,077 schedules from owners of stock who either occupied 

 no land or whose holdings did not exceed one acre. The 

 extent to which estimates have to be resorted to in conse- 

 quence of the non-return of the schedules is now very small, 

 more than 96 per cent, of the cultivated area of Great Britain 

 being accounted for by the statements of the occupiers them- 

 selves. Of the total area of land and water in Great Britain, 

 which is given as 56,772,000 acres, 32,477,000 acres are 



