i 
the total net increase amounted to no more than 28,000 acres, 
an increase which was promptly succeeded by a decline of 
94,000 acres in 1918. 
Total Agricultural Area. —1f to the area under crops and 
permanent pasture is added the area under rough grazings, which 
were first returned in 1891, it will be found that the total area of 
agricultural land, inclusive of rough grazings, was 30,599,000 
acres in 1892* ag against 30,779,779 acres in 1925. This increase 
does not, however, represent an actual expansion in the total 
agricultural area as the returns of rough grazings have recently 
been made much more complete than they formerly were. 
There was also a substantial increase in rough grazings between 
1892 and 1898 which was also probably due to a similar cause. 
Between 1898 and 1911 the alterations in the total agricultural 
area in any one year did not exceed about 20,000 acres, but after 
1911 the changes became more substantial. There was a big 
decline in 1915 which was probably due to the occupation of 
large areas for military purposes throughout the country. But 
the necessities of war and the high prices of the period resulted 
in increases in 1916 and 1917, and the area was about maintained 
in 1918, but the following year saw a substantial fall. In recent 
years efforts have been made to set the collection of statistics 
of rough grazings upon a more satisfactory footing, and some of 
the fluctuations since the close of the war are due to more complete 
returns, but on the other hand much land which was ploughed 
up as a war-time measure ceased to be so cultivated when the 
urgency of the need had disappeared, and it would seem that a 
proportion of the area has been allowed to revert to rough grazing. 
In the years between 1920 and 1925 the decrease in the cultivated 
area appears to have been largely compensated for by the increase 
in rough grazings. 
Figures showing for five-year periods the areas returned in 
these different groups since 1871-75 are given in Table 2 in the 
Appendix. 
7. The Conversion from Arable to Grass land.—During the 
period from 1871 to 1925 there was, as is well known, a very 
considerable conversion of arable land into pasture. At the 
beginning of the period rather less than three-fifths of the 
cultivated land in the country was under arable, at the end of 
the period nearly three-fifths was under permanent pasture. 
The extent of the change during the last fifty years is illustrated 
by Maps II and III. The eastern counties are those in which 
the change from arable to grass is the least marked, but over 
the greater part of the country something more than 60 per cent. 
of the cultivated area is now under permanent grass. In every 
county except Cheshire, Lancashire, Lincoln (Holland) and 
Middlesex, the proportion of arable land has declined in the 
* The returns of rough grazings in 1891 were stated to have been very 
far from complete,