while some 420,000 acres were identified outside urban areas as 
not included in the Returns, much of this was stated to be 
entirely useless for agricultural purposes and only about 75,000 
acres were considered to have even a possible agricultural value. 
Whether the land included in the Returns is as highly 
cultivated or as fully stocked as existing economic conditions admit 
is a matter in regard to which no conclusions can be drawn from 
the statistics. Some of it is admittedly in need of drainage, and, 
as already mentioned, there is an area of no less than 5 million 
acres classed as mountain, heath, moor, down and other rough 
land used for grazing. Included in this latter area there is 
evidently some land which in the past under more favourable 
conditions has been either arable land or better pasture. 
The changes in the distribution of the agricultural area are 
discussed in the Report, but the most important change is the 
decline in arable cultivation. Apart from the war years, this has 
been practically a continuous feature of the Agricultural Returns 
for the last 50 years, the area of 14,766,000 acres in 1871-75 
having fallen by 1921-25 to 11,144,000 acres or by about one- 
fourth. A very large part of this decline took place in the 
first 35 years, the area in 1906-10 being about 11,444,000 
acres. Under the stimulus of the war, there was a substantial 
increase from 10,998,000 acres in 1914 to 12,399,000 acres in 
1918. This was followed after the war by a return to the 
condition previously existing, so that in 1924 the area was 
10,929,000 acres or practically the same as in 1914. In the 
following year, 1925, there was a further fall to 10,682,000 acres, 
which was the smallest area of arable land ever recorded in 
England and Wales and 724,000 acres less than in 1908. The 
loss of arable land over the whole period of 17 years since the 
last census was therefore nearly 6} per cent. The greater part 
of the loss has been due to the decline in corn growing. 
This loss in the arable area since 1908 has been accompanied 
by a loss of permanent grass, the total area under crops and 
permanent grass in England and Wales having fallen from 
27,348,000 acres in 1908 to 25,755,000 acres in 1925. This 
difference is made up of the 724,000 acres of arable already 
referred to and 869,000 acres of permanent grass. A substantial 
decrease in the area of permanent grass was shown by the 
Returns in 1918 as a result of the increase in the arable area 
which took place in the same year. In subsequent years, how- 
ever, the arable area rapidly declined while the area of permanent 
grass though gradually increasing did not by any means return 
to its former level. There seems no doubt that the bulk of the 
land thus transferred from these two categories now appears as 
rough grazings, though naturally some part must be accounted 
for by the encroachment of buildings both in urban and rural 
ATCA.