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FIELDS, FACTORIES AND WORKSHOPS. 



the amount of wheat grown in France.* At the same 

 time the population has only increased by 41 per cent., 

 so that the ratio of increase of the wheat crop has been 

 six times greater than the ratio of increase of popula- 

 tion, although agriculture has been hampered all the 

 time by a series of serious obstacles taxation, military 

 service, poverty of the peasantry, and even, up to 1884, 

 a severe prohibition of all sorts of association among 

 the peasants. It must also be remarked that during 

 the same hundred years, and even within the last fifty 

 years, market-gardening, fruit-culture and culture for 

 industrial purposes have immensely developed in France, 

 so that there would be no exaggeration in saying that 

 the French obtain now from their soil at least six or 

 seven times more than they obtained a hundred years 

 ago. The " means of existence " drawn from the soil 

 have thus grown about fifteen times quicker than the 

 population. 



But the ratio of progress in agriculture is still better 

 seen from the rise of the standard of requirement as 

 regards cultivation of land. Some thirty years ago the 

 French considered a crop quite good when it yielded 

 twenty-two bushels to the acre ; but with the same soil 

 the present requirement is at least thirty-three bushels, 

 while in the best soils the crop is good only when it 

 yields from forty-three to forty-eight bushels, and occa- 

 sionally the product is as much as fifty-five bushels to the 

 acre.t There are whole countries Hesse, for example 



* The researches of Tisserand may be summed up as follows : 



t Grandeau, Etudes agronoiniques, 2 e sdrie. Paris, 1888. 



