NOTES AND QUERIES. 331 



Indications of a similar nature come from all quarters, and 

 render it impossible to doubt that, in the near future, a scarcity 

 of timber will place in a very favourable position those countries 

 and individuals who are wise enough to set their houses in order 

 without delay. 



Notes on Co-operative Agricultural Credit in 

 Germany and Switzerland. 



{Extracted from a Report hij H. de F. Montgomery, D.L., 

 Member of the Agricultural Board for Ireland.) 



The requirements of the classes engaged in agriculture, as 

 regards borrowed capital, involve two kinds of credit — real credit 

 for long loans; personal credit for short loans. The spheres of 

 the two kinds of credit tend to overlap, but in the countries 

 where the problems of agricultural credit have been most 

 thoroughly worked out, it is considered of great importance to 

 restrict this tendency as much as possible. 



Where the whole or part of the permanent working capital is 

 borrowed, and the borrowing takes place without any immediate 

 prospect of repayment of the principal or of more than the 

 interest, with or without such small instalments of principal or 

 contributions to a sinking fund as will not make the annual pay- 

 ments very substantially greater than mere interest payments, 

 long loans are called for, on real credit — being a charge on 

 immovables, especially on lands and houses, in the form of 

 mortgage or hypothec. It is the function of this sort of credit 

 also to supply funds required for building and permanent* im- 

 provements, and also where the land itself is purchased wholly or 

 partly with borrowed money, or is subject to family or other 

 charges, for the benefit of persons other than the owner or 

 occupier. 



The organisation of this sort of credit began in Prussia nearly 

 a century and a half ago by the formation among the largei'|land- 

 owners of mortgage debenture associations {Land schaf ten) (see 

 "The Organisation of Real Credit," National Review, October 

 1892). Much has since been done in Germany to make it 

 accessible to all classes of landowners, first by a perfected system 

 of Local Registration of Title, and of all dealings with real 

 property and charges thereon, and further by the establishment 



