814 The Decline of Wheat-growing in England. 
upon its wheat acreage of 1891 ; this may possibly have been clue 
to a finer autumn, favourable to wheat sowing, north of the Tweed. 
The result of the decennial comparison, as given in the last column, 
indicates that in England alone there has passed out of wheat cul- 
tivation since 1882 an area of 726,522 acres, which is nearly as much 
as the entire area of the county of Stafford, and considerably more 
than the ai’ea of either Chester, Derby, Durham, or Northampton. 
But, as appears in Table IV., this decline of 25-6 per cent, in the 
Table IV. — The Wheat Areas of England and the United Kingdom 
at an Interval of ten Years, 1882 and 1892. 
England 
Scotland, 
Ireland, &c. 
United Kingdom 
acres 
acres 
acres 
1882 
2,829,491 
384,408 
3,103,899 
1892 
2,102,909 
195,038 
2,298,007 
Decline in 1892 
726,.522 
138,770 
80.5,292 
= 25'G per cent. 
= 41-.5 per cent. 
= 27’3 per cent. 
wheat acreage of England was accompanied by a decline of 41 ’5 per 
cent, in the other sections of the United Kingdom. 
Coming now to the special object cf this inquiry — the shifting 
of the wheat area in England — Table V. has been constructed to 
show the acreage of wheat in each county of England in 1892 and 
1891, and the increase or decrease in 1892 compared with 1891. 
The figures in the last column of this Table show the decrease 
in each county in 1892 as compared with 1882. The total area of 
each county — which it may be observed is always greater, and in 
some counties considerably greater, than the cultivated area— is 
stated in the first column of figures in order to afford some guide as 
to the extent to which wheat cultivation is practised in the re- 
spective counties. Hertford, with its 66,901 acres of wheat, has a 
greater proportion of its area under this crop than Hants with its 
larger area of 76,257 acres of wheat, and other similar cases may be 
2 ucked out. 
How very general was the shrinkage in the wheat area of the 
counties of England in 1892 is shown by the frequency of occurrence 
of the minus sign in the fourth column of figures in Table V. With 
four exceptions every county in England seeded less land to wheat 
in 1891-92 than in 1890-91. Saving Westmoreland, the county of 
Cumberland dem otes a less proportion of its area to wheat than any 
other county in England, and it is a curious fact, and perhaps only 
a capricious circumstance, that at a time wdien nearly all the 
counties are decreasing their wheat areas, this high-lying north- 
western county should register an increase. The farmers of Kent 
increased their wheat area by 677 acres, but both Westmoreland 
and Kent pale beside the large increases of 6,973 acres in Norfolk 
and 4,193 acres in Suffolk. It is highly significant that, in a year 
when the counties of England diminished their aggregate wheat 
