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XV. — Tlie Agricultural Returns o/'1866 and 1867. 
By James Lewis. 
After many years of expectation and disappointment, agricul- 
turists have at length been furnished with returns sufficiently 
reliable for many practical purposes, showing the distribution of 
the land under different kinds of cultivation, and of the cattle, 
sheep, and pigs in each county of Great Britain, during the two 
years 1866 and 1867. 
So important an instalment of a complete system of agricul- 
tural statistics has a strong claim to notice in these pages, and 
although the appearance of the Returns within so short an interval 
before the time for publication of the present number of the 
Journal renders it impossible, both from considerations of time 
and space, to analyse them as thoroughly as might be wished, it 
seems desirable that, at any rate, their leading characteristics 
should be indicated in conjunction with such a condensed view 
of the statistics themselves as may serve for future reference and 
comparison. 
The first cattle census was taken on 5th March, 1866, and its 
results were discussed in this Journal (Part II., Vol. II., s.s. 
1866) ; at the same time it was announced that other statistics 
were in process of preparation, and in December, 1866, Returns 
were issued by the Board of Trade, giving the acreage of land under 
crops, bare fallow, and grass, as ascertained in the preceding June 
by the officers of Inland Revenue from occupiers of Jive acres 
and upwards, in every county of Great Britain. The stock and 
acreage Returns of 1866, form the first chapter of, or (more cor- 
rectly) the introduction to, what agriculturists, economists, and 
statists are alike interested in hoping will become an annual 
series of statistics of agriculture, to be enlarged, revised, and per- 
fected, as experience may suggest. 
But whether the Returns are to appear annually or not — and 
an expression in the official preliminary observations upon those 
recently published seems to indicate that an annual series is con- 
templated — it was wisely determined to obtain them in a more 
complete form both for cattle and acreage in 1867 ; forms were 
therefore sent by post to all occupiers of land and owners of 
stock in Great Britain, with a request that they would fill in 
their acreage under different kinds of cultivation and the number 
of their live stock on the 25th of June, 1867, according to printed 
instructions, and promptly return the schedules to the collecting 
officers. The great number of occupiers and owners rendered a 
large staff of persons necessary throughout the country to collect 
