378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



capable of growing a crop. You yourselves will supply better than I can 

 the Australian parallels, at any rate we in England read that the wheat- 

 belt is now being extended into districts where the low rainfall had 

 hitherto been thought to preclude any systematic cropping. 



Now, the fact that the supply of naturally fertile land is not un- 

 limited reacts in its turn upon the old countries. During the 'eighties 

 and 'nineties of the last century the opening up of such vast wheat areas 

 in America, Argentina, Australia, and the development of the overseas 

 trade reduced prices in Europe to such an extent that in Great Britain, 

 where the full extent of the competition was experienced, the extension 

 of agriculture came to an end despite the continued increase of popula- 

 tion. The area of land under cultivation has declined but little despite 

 the growth of the towns, but the process of taking in the waste lands 

 stopped and much of the land already farmed fell back from arable to 

 cheaper pasture. But as soon as production in the newer countries 

 failed to keep pace with the growth of population prices began to rise 

 again, and we are now in the old world endeavoring to make productive 

 the land that has hitherto been of little service except for sport and the 

 roughest of grazing. Even the most densely populated European coun- 

 tries contain great areas of uncultivated land; within fifty miles of 

 London blocks of a thousand acres of waste may be found, and Holland 

 and Belgium, perhaps the most intensively cultivated of all western 

 countries, possess immense districts that are little more than desert. 

 Of the European countries, Germany has taken the lead in endeavoring 

 to bring into use this undeveloped capital; her population is rising 

 rapidly and her fiscal policy has caused her to feel severely the recent 

 increase in the prices of foodstuffs, which she has determined to relieve 

 as far as possible by extending the productivity of her own land. It has 

 been estimated that Germany possesses something approaching to ten 

 million acres of uncultivated land, and a government department has 

 been created to reclaim and colonize this area. 



Before dealing with the processes by which the rough places of the 

 earth are to be made straight there is one general question that deserves 

 consideration — Is it more feasible to increase the production of a given 

 country by enlarging the area under cultivation or by improving the 

 methods of the existing cultivators? There is without doubt plenty of 

 room for the latter process even in the most highly farmed countries : 

 in England the average yield of wheat is about 32 bushels per acre — a 

 good farmer expects 40; the average yield of mangolds, a crop more 

 dependent upon cultivation, is as low as 20 tons per acre when twice as 

 much will not be out of the way with good farming. A large propor- 

 tion of the moderate land in England is kept in the state of poor grass — ■ 

 even as grass its production might be doubled by suitable manuring and 

 careful management, while under the plough its production of cattle- 



