. THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 43 



derived from doing so. These are the two points which 



I have now to discuss. 



To begin by taking the most disadvantageous case : 

 is it possible that the soil of Great Britain, which at 

 present yields food for one-third only of its inhabit- 

 ants, could provide all the necessary amount and 

 variety of food for 33,000,000 human beings when it 

 covers only 56,000,000 acres all told forests and rocks, 

 marshes and peat-bogs, cities, railways and fields out 

 of which only 33,000,000 acres are considered as cultiv- 

 able ? * The current opinion is, that it by no means 

 can ; and that opinion is so inveterate that we even see 

 men of science, who are generally cautious when dealing 

 with current opinions, endorse that opinion without even 

 taking the trouble of verifying it It is accepted as an 

 axiom. And yet, as soon as we try to find out any 

 argument in its favour, we discover that it has not the 

 slightest foundation, either in facts or in judgment upon 

 well-known facts. 



Let us take, for instance, J. B. Lawes' estimates of 

 crops which are published every year in The Times. 

 In his estimate of the year 1887 he made the remark 

 that during the eight harvest years 1853-1860 "nearly 

 three-fourths of the aggregate amount of wheat con- 

 sumed in the United Kingdom was of home growth, 

 and little more than one-fourth was derived from foreign 

 sources " ; but five and twenty years later the figures 

 were almost reversed, that is, " during the eight years 

 1879-1886, little more than one-third has been provided 

 by home crops and nearly two-thirds by imports". 

 But neither the increase of population by 8,000,000 

 nor the increase of consumption of wheat by six-tenths 



* Twenty-three per cent, of the total area of England, 40 per cent, in 

 Wales, and 75 per cent, in Scotland are now under wood, coppice, 

 mountain, heath, water, etc. The remainder, i.e., 32,777,513 acres, which 

 are either under culture or under permanent pasture, may be taken as the 



II cultivable " area of Great Britain. 



