Acreage of Crojis. 
267 
which reference must be made to the official volume. This 
general statement gives the grouping of the crops on the 
77.000. 000 acres whereon are concentrated the population of 
44.000. 000 persons who inhabit the Kingdom as a Avhole. 
Rather more than one acre per person, or 47,000,000 acres 
altogether, is accounted for within the so-called cultivated area, 
whereof in round numbers 27,400,000 acres are classified as 
permanent grass and 19,609,000 acres are regarded as arable 
land. Of the latter area not very far short of one-half, or 
8,317,000 acres, still carries corn of one description or another. 
About one-half of the corn area, or 4,219,000 acres, was under 
oats, and one-fifth part only, or 1,665,000 acres, under wheat 
in 1907 ; while the stock of cattle recorded in the United 
Kingdom now exceeds 11,628,000 head, that of sheep once 
again exceeds 30,000,000, and the pigs enumerated in these 
returns are within a little of reaching the 4,000,000 head — a 
figure which has only been seven times exceeded in the forty 
years between 1867 and 1907. 
Acreage op Crops. 
The report which Mr. Rew submits on this occasion to the 
Secretary of the Board of Agriculture deals, however, in detail 
only with the 56,200,000 acres forming the land surface of 
Great Britain, whereof 32,243,447 acres were accounted for as 
cultivated under crops and grass in 510,954 separate agri- 
cultural holdings exceeding one acre of land, while these half 
million farms employed an additional area of rough grazing 
land, estimated as 12,742,779 acres. Were the estimated 
surface under woodlands added to these totals it would be found 
that 85 per cent, of the measured area is brought under review 
in these returns! The Department in reviewing the year’s 
figures notes the welcome diminution in the small minority of 
occupiers whose failure to co-operate in the collection of the 
yearly statistics slightly retards the date of publication ; and 
it is satisfactory to find that those in default in this matter 
are now reduced to the very insignificant figure of 2'4 per cent. 
The year’s changes in Great Britain include a further 
reduction of 56,000 acres of arable land, but since in 1907 
some 53,000 acres less than in 1906 were left in bare fallow 
there is practically no diminution of arable land actually 
cropped. Declines in the area under wheat, barley, rye, 
potatoes, turnips, rape, and hops have been balanced by the 
parallel extension of oats, beans, peas, mangolds, vetches, 
lucerne, cabbage, kohl-rabi, and other crops. 
The area under Wheat in Great Britain in 1907 was 1,625,445 
acres, being a decrease of nearly 7^ per cent, on the year ; but 
the shrinkage of 130,000 acres is ascribed rather to the weather 
