The A'/i-icuUu7-aI jRdnrns of iSijQ and ' 231 
and made available for public use, unless it be included in the 
scheme of Returns published by the Board of Trade, Mr. Caird 
objects to official estimates, yet estimates have admittedly, and 
from necessity, been freely employed in the Returns already pub- 
lished ; and I am free to assert that were such of our Public 
Departments as are in the habit of issuinj^ Statistical Reports to 
adopt the rule of giving nothing but facts, those documents 
would at once be deprived of a large measure of their interest 
and value to the public. I do not think tliere is much probability 
of an intelligent person being misled by estimates it they are 
clearly declared so to be, and the data upon which they rest are 
given ; of course if they are disguised as apparent facts they 
forthwith become a source of fallacy and error. 
But I cannot do better than quote here a paragraph taken from 
that part of the programme of the London Statistical Congress 
(1860), which was drawn up and signed by Mr. Caird himself, 
defining most clearly the relation in which acreage returns and 
produce estimates stand toward each other :— 
" The advantage of agricultvual statistics is acknowledged more or less by all 
civilised communities. But statistics being statements of fact, there has always 
been found, in regaid to those of agriculture, a difficulty in the necessity that 
was generally felt of supplying, along with the ascertained extent of land under 
various crops, an estimate of the probable yield. In publishing such returns, 
therefore, a distinction should be observed between that which is fact and that 
which is estimate. Nor is there any practical difficulty in this, for, while the 
facts (viz., the ascertained acreage) should be given as a reliable basis for esti- 
mating the yield of crops, an estimate of that yield ought also to be afterwards 
supplied, which, being an estimate merely, will be accepted only in so far as it 
may accord with each man's private judgment." 
And as to the utility as well as the perfect practicability of 
getting these estimates of produce, I think the example afforded 
by the Irish Returns for a series of years is conclusive. Mr. 
Donnelly's estimates for the years 1865 and 1866 will be found 
in the annexed Table V., with explanatory remarks upon the 
plan adopted for securing trustworthy information. 
In conclusion, I may perhaps be allowed to quote another 
sentence from the article in the ' Daily News,' already referred 
to:— 
" The Returns, Mr. Caird tells us, also afford most valuable information upon 
many other points. Among these he instances the relative productiveness of 
large and small farms, and of corn and grass, the importance and wealth of 
■certain counties as compared with others, and the extent of farms as influenced 
by climate and soU." 
I presume that herein Mr. Caird is speaking prophetically about 
what the Returns may be expected to include at some future time, 
inasmuch as in their present form they do not throw the smallest 
light upon several of the points referred to. 
