The region consisting of the Provinces of Buenos Ayres, Santa Fé, Córdoba, and Entre Rios, which is the richest in cereals, is also that in which the greatest number of small farms are to be found. The statistics for 1901-1902 show that out of 37,434 farms 13,150, or about 36 per cent., were worked by their owners; 18,819, or 50 per cent., by tenants; and 5465, or 14 per cent., by _métayers_——that is, tenants who give up from half to two-thirds of the crops to the owner of the land. Other more recent statistics, relating to the Province of Santa Fé, give the number of farmers owning their land at the time of the harvest as 6747, or 32 per cent., and the number of tenants as 14,227, or 68 per cent. The majority of the farms, especially those cultivated by the owners, says the _Investigación agricola_, have an area varying from 60 to 250 acres. Farms held on lease or by payment of part of the harvest are usually larger, especially in the former case, and the work is done with greater expedition, but as a rule less perfectly and without the same stimulus. Farms varying from 750 to 1500 acres and more which employ day-labourers are still less numerous, since as a general thing nothing is gained by employing them. On the other hand, however, there are large farms whose owners in reality only supervise matters of administration, and which are divided among tenant-farmers or _métayers_, paying so much per cent, of the harvest, or a rent in kind, according to the crops and the conditions agreed upon. In such a case the proprietor or colonist is not actually an agriculturalist, but a business man, who more often than not has not sufficient knowledge to assume the scientific or even the rational direction of the operations on his estate. _Agricultural Products_ Having considered the physical conditions of the Argentine soil, the regions given over to particular forms of agriculture, and the disposition of rural property, the moment has now come to consider what areas are at present respectively producing crops of various kinds from seed, comparing them not only with the area of each province, but also with the statistics of previous years. In making this inquiry, we have a valuable starting-point in the _Censo agropecuario_, taken in the month of October 1888; the first serious undertaking of the kind ever attempted in the Republic under competent direction.[40] [Footnote 40: _Cf. L’agriculture et l’élevage dans la République Argentine, d’après le recensement de la première quinzaine d’octobre 1888_, by F. Latzina, printed by P. Mouillot, Paris, 1889.]