THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 53 



seven acres under green crops and eighty-four acres 

 under clover fields and grasses under rotation. And 

 finally, out of the 110 acres given to corn crops, the 

 best twenty-five acres (one-fortieth part of the territory, 

 one-twenty-third of the cultivable area) are picked out 

 and sown with wheat They are well cultivated, well 

 manured, and upon them an average of twenty-eight 

 bushels to the acre is obtained ; and upon these twenty- 

 five acres out of 1000 the world superiority of British 

 agriculture is based. 



The net result of all that is, that on nearly 33,000,000 

 acres of cultivable land the food is grown for one-third 

 part only of the population (two-thirds of the food it con- 

 sumes is imported), and we may say accordingly that, 

 although nearly two-thirds of the territory is cultivable, 

 British agriculture provides home-grown food for each 

 125 or 130 inhabitants only per square mile (out of 

 378). In other words, nearly three acres of the cul- 

 tivable area are required to grow the food for each 

 person. Let us then see what is done with the land in 

 France and Belgium. 



Now, if we simply compare the average twenty-eight 

 bushels per acre of wheat in Great Britain with the 

 average seventeen bushels in France, the comparison 

 is all in favour of these islands ; but such averages are 

 of little value because the two systems of agriculture 

 are totally different in the two countries. The French- 

 man also has his picked and heavily manured " twenty- 

 five acres " in the north of France and in Ile-de-France, 

 and from these picked acres he obtains average crops 

 ranging from thirty-one to thirty-three bushels.* How- 



* That is, thirty-one to thirty-three bushels on the average ; forty 

 bushels in good farms, and fifty in the best. The area under wheat is 

 17,500,000 acres : the cultivated area, 95,000,000 acres ; and the aggregate 

 superficies of France, 132,000,000 acres. Compare Lecouteux, Le ble, sa 

 culture extensive et intensive, 1883 ; Risler, Physiologic et culture du bit, 

 1886; Boitet, Herbages et prairies naturelles, 1885; Baudrillart, Les 

 populations agricoles de la Normandie, 1880; Grandeau, La production 

 agricole en France ; L^once de Lavergne's last edition ; and so on. 



