421 
been utilized and an immense production has been realized, though the 
dreaded phyllovera has threatened destruction in several departments. 
The tax-gatherer has an intimate connection with this region, while the 
wine interest has been thé scare-crow of foreign-tariff regulators. . 
Other wine-making countries have surplus products to export, and any 
unfriendly legislation may be expected to react in the shape of reprisals 
upon French exports. The cautious foreign policy of France has meas- 
urably avoided the alternate perils of excessive foreign competition at 
home and of closed markets abroad. The collision of interest once sup- 
posed to exist between the vine and sugar-beet regions has been obvi- 
ated. It is found cheaper to re-enforce the weak wines of the south with 
alcohol from the beet than to distil it from grapes. Sericulture, an im- 
portant interest of this region, has suffered from the malady of silk- 
worm eggs, requiring a renewal of the stock from oriental countries. 
But, in spite of causes which have threatened the stability of these south- 
ern industries, substantial progress is believed to have been secured. 
Scientific culture has narrowed the range of disastrous influences, and the 
southward extension of some northern crops has diversified the culture 
of this region, giving greater stability and more certain returns. 
A large number of French farmers command but narrow resources, 
realize limited returns, and are under pressure to sell as soon as possible 
after harvest. Thisis the farming of the moors, of recent forest-clear- 
ings, and of natural pastures. Popular delusions as to the practicability 
of redeeming these poor lands from their comparative sterility have been 
generated and stimulated by corrupt artifices, and an important function 
of agricultural journalism has been to puncture these bubbles and ex- 
plode these delusions, which have entailed great losses upon parties but 
little able to bear them. But the increased activities of commerce and 
other changes of circumstances have largely tended to redeem this class 
of lands from the class of unprofitable culture, and to utilize what would 
otherwise be a waste. ’ 
The questions of share-farming and rent-farming have approximated 
a settlement, and the profitable circumstances and limits of each are be- 
coming much better understood than formerly. Great soil-improve- 
ments, with facilities for irrigation, have placed many previously-uncul- 
tivated soils in the list of profitable culture. The cultivation of these 
soils by their actual proprietors has removed one of the difficulties that 
.embarrassed a large class of cases. The extension of the methods of 
economic science to lands of inferior fertility has also broadened the area 
of cultivation. The relations of supply and demand are better under- 
stood than they were ten years ago, and hence agricultural enterprise 
has been directed to far more profitable results. The writer of this 
résumé sums up the great benetit of the past decade in the close approxi- 
mation of men of science, of men of labor, and of men charged with gov- 
erning society, and the more complete harmony resulting from a more 
thorough interchange of views. The causes of friction are in process of 
removal, and the productive resources of France have consequently re- 
ceived a higher development, 
AGRICULTURAL WAGES IN FRANCE.—M. De Foville, in the Heono- 
miste Francais, gives a review of the changes in the wages of farm-labor 
in France during the past half century. The facts indicate a great im- 
provement in the conditions of rural laboring-life. Fifty years ago great 
destitution, and occasional starvation, were the salient features of the 
condition of the rural working classes. A great amelioration has been 
wrought during the last half century, and those revolting extremes of 
suffering are no longer heard of. 
