The Agricultural Returns o/ lSGG and 1SG7. 227 
in calf," and this alteration partly accounts for the apparently 
greater increase of cows than of otlier cattle. 
The increase of cattle in England and Wales and in Scotland 
was at the rate of 4 per cent., while in Ireland the numbers 
decreased ; the return of sheep increased 31 per cent, in England 
and Wales and Scotland, and 13 per cent, in Ireland; pigs were 
more numerously returned in England and Wales by 23 per cent, 
in 1867 than in the previous year, but in Scotland and Ireland 
the numbers decreased. 
Returns of acreage under crops and of the number of Live 
Stock in various foreign countries have been furnished by their 
respective Statistical Departments to the Board of Trade, and the 
principal facts will be found at the end of this paper (Table II.) 
for convenience of comparison with those of the United King- 
dom. Tlie estimates of foreign agricultural produce (Tables 
III. and IV.) should remind the Board of Trade that a very 
important item of information — supplied, by the way, in the 
Irish Agricultural Statistics, and quoted in the Appendix hereto 
(Table V.) — is yet wanting in the Agricultural Returns of Great 
Britain. 
In concluding this very hasty and imperfect sketch of the 
Agi'icultural Returns, 1 cannot refrain from once more urging 
that in future some better arrangement of the tabular matter 
for each county should be adopted than the alphabetical one 
which appears to satisfy the Board of Trade. Tlie Registration, 
Poor Law, and Educational Statistics of Great Britain are pub- 
lished according to a topographical arrangement, which brings 
together in groups counties lying proximate one to another ; 
and the advantage of this plan is that it admits of a broad 
view being taken of the facts observed — an essential clement 
in statistical analysis always, but particularly so Avhen time 
and space are both limited. In the present case it has been 
found impracticable to make use of the County Tables to any- 
thing like the extent desired, for the want of time to throw the 
facts into a properly comparable form ; hence little has been 
attempted beyond a mere statement of some few of the features 
of the Returns which most readily attracted attention. 
Exception must also be taken to the basis upon which the per- 
centages are calculated in the Returns. The calculations given 
by the Board of Trade relating to the stock and acreage of the 
United Kingdom are — 
1. Percentage of acreage under corn crops 
„ „ green crops 
„ „ bare fallow 
„ „ clover, &c. 
„ „ permanent pasture 
to total acreage ' 
returned as under 
cultivation. 
Q 2 
