THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 49 



grass, three inches high, and thistles in profusion. 

 Twenty, thirty such fields can be seen at one glance 

 from the top of every hill ; and thousands -of acres are 

 in that state, notwithstanding that the grandfathers of 

 the present generation have devoted a formidable 

 amount of labour to the clearing of that land from the 

 stones, to fencing it, roughly draining it and the like. 

 In every direction I could see abandoned cottages and 

 orchards going to ruin. A whole population has dis- 

 appeared, and even its last vestiges must disappear if 

 things continue to go on as they have gone. And this 

 takes place in a part of the country endowed 

 with a most fertile soil and possessed of a climate 

 which is certainly more congenial than the cli- 

 mate of Jersey in spring and early summer a land 

 upon which even the poorest cottagers occasionally raise 

 potatoes as early as the first half of May. But how can 

 that land be cultivated when there is nobody to cultivate 

 it ? " We have fields ; men go by, but never go in," an 

 old labourer said to me ; and so it is in reality.* 



It will be said, of course, that the above opinion 

 strangely contrasts with the well-known superiority of 

 British agriculture. Do we not know, indeed, that 

 British crops average twenty-eight bushels of wheat per 

 acre, while in France they reach only seventeen bushels ? 

 Does it not stand in all almanacs that Britain gets every 

 year 180,000,000 sterling worth of animal produce- 

 milk, cheese, meat and wool from her fields ? All that 

 is true, and there is no doubt that in many respects 

 British agriculture is superior to that of many other na- 

 tions. As regards obtaining the greatest amount of pro- 



* Round the small hamlet where I stayed for two summers, there were : 

 one farm, 370 acres, four labourers and two boys; another, about 300 

 acres, two men and two boys; a third, 800 acres, five men only md 

 probably as many boys. In truth, the problem of cultivating the lain/ 

 with the least number of men has been solved in this spot by not culti 

 vating at all as much as two-thirds of it. 



4 



