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THE COLLECTION OF STATISTICS.

In creating the Department of Agriculture, Congress specified as one of its leading objects the collection of agricultural statistics. One of the greatest agriculturists of Scotland, Sir John Sinclair, and one of those who were preeminent for their vast influence in the advancement of agriculture, regarded such statistics as of the highest utility, and, under his direction, a great expense was incurred and great labor bestowed in the collection, arrangement, and publication of the agricultural statistics of Scotland. In alluding to these statistics, the Duke of Argyle, President of the Highland Agricultural Society of Scotland, at a recent banquet of that society, said:

"And here I cannot help expressing very great regret-a regret in which I am sure that the scientific and intelligent tenant farmers of Scotland will share-that it has been found necessary to give up the system of agricultural statistics in this country. I do not mean te express a decided opinion whether the Highland Society was or was not the fitting organiza tion for gathering that information; but this I do say, that the years during which that statistical information was collected by your secretary, Mr. Maxwell, and freely given by the tenant farmers, were years of great interest in their result, and that the exertions then made reflected the highest credit upon him and upon the farmers of Scotland who supplied him with the information. I say so, because you probably all know that, in England at least, there is a very great prejudice against statistical information; and I believe that there is e sense of the comparative inutility of collecting it in one part of the country when it is not done over the whole country, and the impossibility which every government has hitherto found in insisting upon that information being collected in England, has been one of the causes which have led this society to drop the collection of these statistics. I do not wonder at it. It was a circumstance of very great discouragement, because the value of statistics depends upon their completeness, and if you have not statistics for the whole island, undoubtedly the utility of the statistics you have gathered is very much impaired. Nevertheless, I cannot help expressing the hope that the time is not very far distant when these prejudices to which I have referred, which do not exist in Scotland, will be overcome in England, and that, under the guardianship of the law, a complete system of agricultural statistics will be organized for the whole kingdom."

The prejudices here referred to exist in this country; and under the plans in operation in several of the States for taking some agricultural statistics, the imperfect returns but strengthen these prejudices. The State of Ohio is an exception, and California exhibits a juster regard for statistical information than any other State.

A portion of the agricultural statistics of the whole country is taken every ten years by the general government; but it has reference less to the improvement of agriculture than to the assistance of commerce. It is simply an inventory of the leading crops and of the chief items of agricultural investment. It does not aim to unfold our vast internal commerce, by showing the cost of market transportation and in what sections the crops are consumed. The relation of the different parts of agriculture to each other, to manufactures and commerce, is but imperfectly and very generally exhibited. A political consequence of this was the attempted usurpation of cotton. At what expense to the farmer these crops are produced; at what cost to the soil; what are the errors of our agriculture, its difficulties, its hardships, its wrongs-all such matters are neither directly nor indirectly. a purpose or an accomplishment of our decennial statistics.

With means totally inadequate for the collection of statistics by which any of these important purposes might be accomplished, the Commissioner of Agriculture, nevertheless, sought to obtain those within his power, and for useful objects. During last winter he issued circulars to every county in the loyal States, making inquiries relative to the prices of agricultural products in them and the average yield per acre of the leading crops. He issued others, during the summer and fall months, to make known the monthly condition of the crops, their amounts, &c. The medium, for communicating the knowledge