39Q TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ordinary rotation of rye, oats, potatoes and clover. When the heath- 

 land is divided among small tenants in an unreclaimed state, cropping 

 often begins without the lupins, the necessary nitrogen being imported 

 by nitrate of soda, but for years the land shows inferior results. Only 

 the tenant can rarely afford to lose the year the lupin crop involves, and 

 so great is the demand for land in Germany that the State finds it 

 preferable to let the tenant reclaim than to reclaim for him, and charge 

 him as rent the cost of the more thorough process. And now as to the 

 finance of the operation : the reclaiming down to the ploughing in of the 

 lupin crop costs from £5 to £6 an acre, the bare heath costs from 

 £5 to £7 an acre, the reclaimed land after a few years' cultivation would 

 sell at £20 to £30 an acre. Meantime the State has probably made a 

 free grant for drainage, looking to get some interest back in increased 

 taxation ; the local authority has also made roads for which the increased 

 rating due to a new agricultural community must be the only return. 

 It is a long-sighted policy which will only find its full justification after 

 many years when the loans have all been paid off and the State lias 

 gained a well-established addition to its agricultural land and its pro- 

 ductive population. In comparing English with German conditions there 

 are certain differences to be taken into account — in the first place the 

 work of reclamation will be dearer in England because of the higher 

 price of labor, then the land will not be so valuable when won because 

 the higher scale of prices for agricultural products enhances the price 

 of land in German}'. Next, I doubt, in view of the great industrial 

 demand for men in England, if we have the men available who will 

 bring to the land the skill and power of drudgery that I saw being put 

 into these German holdings of thirty to forty acres in their earlier years 

 of low productivity. Moreover, in Germany these heaths are generally 

 bordered by forests, in which the small holder gets occupation for part 

 of the year while his wife and children keep the farm going. For this, 

 if for no other reason, afforestation and land reclamation and settle- 

 ment should go on together. But, despite these drawbacks, I am still 

 of opinion that the reclamation of such heath-lands is a sound com- 

 mercial venture in England, either for a landowner who is thinking of 

 a future rather than of a present return on his capital, or for the state 

 or other public body, wherever the waste land can be acquired for less 

 than £5 an acre. The capitalized value of its present rental rarely ap- 

 proaches that figure, but the barrenest heath is apt to develop the poten- 

 tialities of a gold-mine when purchase by the state comes in question. 

 The map of England is so written over in detail with boundaries and 

 rights and prescriptions that the path of the would-be reclaimer, who 

 must work on a large scale if he is to work cheaply, can only be slow and 

 devious. There are other possibilities of winning agricultural land 

 even in England, from the slob land and estuaries, from the clays now- 



