866 
Publications of Interest to Agriculturists. 
elsewhere, and which do not call for consideration here. He recom- 
mends, further, a policy of the reversal of State influences favouring 
the aggregation of land, which would include the increase of death 
duties on land and the abandonment of the practice of conferring 
peerages upon large landowners and county magistracies upon small 
ones ; a policy that will not, we think, particularly recommend itself 
to the agriculturist, whether owner or occupier. He says nothing 
in faA 7 our of easing land of its excessive burthens of imperial and 
local taxation, or of the protection of the English cultivator from 
the injury caused to him by the dishonest sale of foreign meat, milk, 
and other products, as if they were English. 
In his last chapter Mr. Shaw Lefevre considers nationalisation 
and municipalisation of land, and concludes in favour of individual 
ownership. We fancy that there are not many who have any 
practical experience of land ownership or land cultivation who will 
be disposed to disagree with him in this conclusion. 
S. B. L. Druce. 
WHEAT AND SHEEP IN ENGLAND IN 1893. 
Some remarkable changes are brought into view from a detailed 
examination of the Agricultural Returns issued by the Board of 
Agriculture for the year 1893, summary tables of which, for Great 
Britain and for the United Kingdom, are given on pp. 883 and 884. 
The dates for comparison are June 5, 1893, and June 4, 1892. 
The acreage of wheat has undergone a diminution in all 
divisions of the United Kingdom, but the shrinkage is proceeding 
at even a more rapid rate outside England than in England itself. 
From the records of past and present years it is calculated that 
England — 
In 1871-75 had 87 89 per cent, of the wheat acreage of the United Kingdom. 
„ 1876-80 „ 89 76 „ „ „ „ 
,, 1882 „ 89-43 ,, ,, ,, ,, „ 
y , 1892 ,, 91-49 ,, ,, ,, „ „ 
„ 1893 ) 92 00 „ „ ,, ,, ,, 
This year then, 92 per cent, of the wheat acreage of the United 
Kingdom was in England alone. But an inspection of Table I., on 
the oppsite page, will show that the proportion of the cultivated 
land of England which is devoted to wheat is steadily diminishing, 
and that in 1893 it amounted to very little more than half the 
corresponding area of 1870. Hence, in a period of less than twenty- 
five years, England has lost nearly half of its acreage of wheat., the 
actual decline from 1870 to 1893 amounting to 1,449,104 acres. 
