Oats.

The increase of oat acreage is exceedingly large, 444,191 acres in 1878 to 310,226 in 1877, a gain in the one year of over 30 per cent. The main belt of oat acreage, like that of barley, may be said to be in subdivisions, as of the twelve counties constituting it - those having to exceed 10,000 acres - six are in the southwest, four in the south and southeast, and one each in the east and the northeast. In relative rank those in the southwest are Sedgwick first, McPherson second, Reno fifth, Harvey sixth, Sumner ninth and Butler eleventh. Of the south and southeast counties Cherokee is third, Labette fourth, Crawford eighth and Bourbon tenth. Johnson in the east is seventh, and Brown in the northeast twelfth.

The following tabular statement shows the acreage of the counties embraced in the first belt in 1877 and in 1878, the increase this year over last, and the acreage in these same counties in 1872, the counties being so placed as to show their relative rank in the different showings:

In 1872, the oat acreage of these twelve counties was twenty-seven per cent. of that of the State. In 1878 it was more than 36 per cent., while of the increase of acreage in the State, upward of 35 per cent. of it was in these counties.

The second belt - those counties having 8,000 to 10,000 acres - skips here, there and everywhere about the State. Linn leads, Pottawatomie next, then Dickinson, Montgomery, Atchison, Jefferson, Marshall, Neosho Douglas, Lyon, Nemaha, Leavenworth, Marion, Washington, Cowley, Doniphan and Saline, in the order they are placed. The aggregate acreage of the twelve reaching 147,068, or within a fraction of one-third of the entire acreage of the State.

In 1866, Kansas was twenty-eighth among the States in aggregate of oat product. In 1876, she was ninth.

TABLE Showing the Number of Acres of Oats in each County to the Square Mile for 1878, arranged in seven groups of ten counties each, commencing with the highest.