410 Statistics affecting British Agricultural Interests. 
mated results of the year’s harvest in detail, Wheat in G-reat Britain 
was grown on a surface less by a seventh than in 1892 ; and the 
mean yield per acre being also less, though only by half a bushel, 
than in the bad harvest of that year, the gross total outturn was 
smaller than the crop of 1892 by nearly a sixth part. As already 
shown, the yield per acre of the Wheat crop in Great Britain was 
practically 10 per cent, short of the accepted standard. But it 
must be noted that the quality was in numerous instances unusually 
high, and in one or two cases weights of 65 lb. and even 67 lb. per 
bushel were reported. 
So far as the reduced total produce follows from the diminished 
area devoted to wheat growing, the comments offered on the 
acreage returns explain sufficiently the local effect of the changes 
thus arising. But the mean Wheat yield per acre on the area 
still left under this cereal in 1893 covers such varied local results 
as to invite closer inquiry. Compared with the standard ordinary 
average, accepted since 1885 as a point for comparison, although 
the English yield taken by itself was last year more than 3 
bushels per acre short on the whole, yet in York, Durham, Northum- 
berland, and in Scotland, an excess of 3 to 4 bushels per acre 
over the average was recorded. In Cambridge, Essex, Middle- 
sex, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, on the other hand, the yield was 
8 to 9 bushels under average, and in Hampshire over 6 ^ bushels 
short. These figures represent reductions of from 24 to 30 per 
cent. They doubtless indicate the chief sufferers from the meteo- 
rological conditions of the year, and help to explain the large 
declines of 13 per cent, in yield in the first and 17| per cent, in the 
second produce divisions which are shown in Table IV., and in the 
map on p. 408, while they afford a strong contrast with the over- 
average yield of 101? per cent, reported from the Northern and 
North-Western counties of the fourth division. 
The yield of W T heat in 1893 varied indeed so greatly in certain 
groups of counties that it may be worth while to make a further 
analysis of the general results in still narrower areas by breaking 
up the four divisions of England shown in Table IV. into the 
eight subdivisions which were referred to in the report on the 
produce returns of 1891. 
In Table IV. it is made clear that the greatest reduction in the 
yield per acre of last season’s Wheat crop occurred in the five South- 
Eastern counties lying south of the Thames, forming the first part of 
the second division, with a decline of nearly 25 per cent, from the 
standard. The first section of the first or Eastern division — which is 
usually the area of highest Wheat yield, and is distinguished as the 
district where this cereal still retains an exceptional share of the 
cultivated area — comes next in order of diminished yield, with a 
reduction of 21 per cent. ; the third largest decline being in the 
counties of the extreme South-West ; while the whole Northern 
division returned an over-average crop, which was best in the coun- 
ties nearest the Scottish Border. 
