242 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



recently as 1S70 blood ran in the streets of man}" of the towns and 

 villages of France and Germany, and the inhabitants suffered the 

 evils which always follow war. At present Europe is an armed camp. 

 One can not escape the feeling that the people believe that they are 

 safer to-day behind solid brick or stone walls and iron gates. How- 

 ever, not all the sections practice the village system. In some places 

 scattered farmhouses are to be found. They are more common in 

 Switzerland than in Germany. That Switzerland has a Republican 

 form of government is perhaps not without its significance in this con- 

 nection. 



One of the great surprises to me in visiting Europe was the relatively 

 large amount of level open country'. Perhaps you have not made this 

 mistake, but I had supposed that Europe was a rough and often moun- 

 tainous country on which it was not possible to use to advantage 

 modern agricultural machinery such as we employ so exclusively in 

 America. The reason for this impression grows out of the fact that 

 it is almost impossible to take a satisfactory picture of a level stretch 

 of the country, and out of the further fact that travelers generally 

 are not interested in the level tracts but hurry through them to what 

 they consider the more beautiful mountain scenery. It is compara- 

 tively easy to take pictures of the mountains, and thus Americans see 

 many illustrations of mountain scenery but scarcely none of the level 

 areas. 



The next thing which will impress the observer from the car-window 

 is the ribbon-like appearance of the country, due to the fact that the 

 land is divided into small rectangular plots. If one looks out over 

 these intensely cultivated areas it looks just as though the land were 

 covered with large numbers of different colored ribbons. The picture 

 shows a mountain side. (See Fig. 2). I was able to get the picture 

 from the steamboat because the land was on a mountain side. When 

 in the level sections, however, which are much more characteristic, it 

 is almost impossible to get any photographs of the country which 

 would given an idea of what the traveler sees. 



Figure 3 shows the plots rather than the hop holes. The plot on 

 which the hop holes stand is about 450 feet long and 30 feet wide. On 

 the left is a strip of clover, and on the right a strip of volunteer grass, 

 and next to this a strip of vetch. From the point where this picture 

 was taken hundreds of acres could be seen which were laid off in plots 

 with road-ways at the ends, and looked for all the world like a mam- 

 moth American Experiment Station. For miles in every direction the 

 land was divided into similar areas. There were no fences, and, as 

 previously explained, the people all live in farm villages. 



In some parts of Germany, the sub-division of the land through in- 

 heritance, or otherwise, has gone on to such an extent that the Govern- 

 ment has stepped in and by law re-distributed the land. As it is now, 

 one man may own a dozen of these little tracts of land in various parts 

 of the region in which he lives. The Government has in some cases 

 re-distributed the land so that he should have all his land in one tract. 



An incident occurred at the Agricultural Experiment Station at 

 Bonn, Germany, which will illustrate the intensive character of some 

 of the farming. I was shown some experiments in transplanting rye. 

 It was explained that if rye is transplanted at just the right time, and 

 planted a little deeper than it grew originally, the yield would be in- 



