THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 93 



labour in tilling, planting, cultivating and digging, and 

 less expenditure in manure thirty tons grown on ten 

 acres, or the same thirty tons grown on one acre or 

 two ? If labour is of no consideration, while every penny 

 spent in seeds and manure is of great importance, as is 

 unhappily very often the case with the peasant he will 

 perforce choose the first method But is it the most 

 economic ? 



Again, I just mentioned that in the Saffelare dis- 

 trict and Jersey they succeed in keeping one head of 

 ihorned cattle to each acre of green crops, meadows 

 and pasture land, while elsewhere two or three acres 

 are required for the same purpose. But better results 

 still can be obtained by means of irrigation, either with 

 sewage or even with pure water. In England, farmers 

 are contented with one and a half and two tons of hay 

 per acre, and in the part of Flanders just mentioned, 

 two and a half tons of hay to the acre are considered a 

 fair crop. But on the irrigated fields of the Vosges, the 

 Vaucluse, etc., in France, six tons of dry hay become the 

 rule, even upon ungrateful soil ; and this means consider- 

 ably more than the annual food of one milch cow (which 

 can be taken at a little less than five tons) grown on each 

 acre. All taken, the results of irrigation have proved 

 so satisfactory in France that during the years 1862-82 

 no less than 1,355,000 acres of meadows have been 

 irrigated,* which means that the annual meat-food of at 

 least 1,500,000 full-grown persons, or mpre, has been 

 added to the yearly income of the country ; home-grown, 

 not imported. In fact, in the valley of the Seine, the 

 value of the land was doubled by irrigation ; in the 

 Sadne valley it was increased five times, and ten times 

 in certain landes of Britanny.t 



* Barral in journal d' Agriculture pratique, 2 fevrier, 1889 ; Boitel, 

 Herbages et Prairies naturelles, Paris, 1887. 



f The increase of the crops due to irrigation is most instructive. In 

 the most unproductive Sologne, irrigation has increased the hay cro/ 



