THE 



ANNUAL CYCLOPAEDIA. 



A 



AGRICULTURE, DECLINE OF, IN ENG- 

 LAND. From various sources the fact has 

 become apparent that agriculture in England 

 has of late years suffered a great, almost alarm- 

 ing decline. The whole subject is occupying 

 the attention of the public, and numerous pub- 

 lications of interest have appeared, in which 

 are investigated the various phases of this de- 

 cline during the last fifteen or twenty years, 

 and a searching inquiry is made into the state 

 and prospects of English agriculture at the 

 present, as well as what may reasonably be 

 looked for in the immediate future. 



BAD SEASONS. The chief occasion of present 

 suffering is the succession of bad seasons, the 

 loss from which has been summed up in figures 

 absolutely appalling. And further, the uneasy, 

 restless condition of mind with masses of the 

 people urges the search for a deeper source 

 of the evil, e. g., in the social and legal rela- 

 tions between the owner and the cultivator of 

 the land. But, without entering into that 

 question here, it is clear that extreme remedies 

 (urged by some) are to be deprecated, and the 

 facts are fairly and calmly to be examined into, 

 seeing that the land-owner, the fanner, and 

 the laborer have really a common interest in 

 every measure which will tend to draw the 

 most produce out of the land for their own 

 profit and the good of the whole community. 

 " High farming ' 1 (as it is called), which implies 

 the importation of material from without, is 

 not found to yield any sufficient remedy. Its 

 expense has, hardly without exception, beeu 

 found to be greater than its returns. A 

 marked improvement in the wages of domestic 

 servants has had the effect of drawing away 

 numbers of the daughters of laborers from 

 field-work, and the complaint is freely made 

 that juvenile labor is much decreased by the 

 longer attendance at school, and the ill results 

 of much which children learn there, in render- 

 ing them dissatisfied with house - work and 

 farm-labor. 



VOL. xxii. 1 A 



AMERICAN COMPETITION. American compe- 

 tition, too, has had a most depressing effect upon 

 agricultural interests in England. The wheat- 

 crop in the United States has grown during the 

 twenty years just past from twenty to sixty 

 million quarters. Exports from America of 

 meat, cheese, and butter have also largely 

 increased. Some comfort, however such as 

 it is may be drawn from the consideration 

 that Manitoba, a rising and important part of 

 the British possessions in America, promises to 

 exceed in fertility all the wheat-growing coun- 

 tries in the world. During the past fourteen 

 years it appears that the United Kingdom has 

 obtained from abroad about one half the 

 amount of its consumption of wheat. " It is 

 clear," says an English writer, " that, however 

 much we may deplore the losses from bad sea- 

 sons, the extension of tillage throughout the 

 world has not kept pace with the needs of our 

 population ; and the new railways and water- 

 ways abroad may not prove more injurious to 

 English farmers, in the face of an increasing 

 population, than the extension of roads in 

 England was to the farmers of Middlesex, who 

 petitioned Parliament, in the last century, 

 against the opening up of remote districts 

 which, they said, could undersell them, ow- 

 ing to the cheapness of their lands.' 1 Wheat 

 growing is not regarded by good authorities 

 as of first-rate importance in English home- 

 farming; * on the contrary, live-stock seems 

 to have become the paramount interest in agri- 

 culture. 



STATISTICS. The London "Times" furnishes 

 some very valuable as well as instructive sta- 

 tistics on this subject, especially with reference 

 to the question of live-stock in farming. There 

 is, it appears, a very great curtailing, almost 

 relinquishing, of the breeding or fattening of 



* Of the whole cultivated area of the United Kingdom 

 (about 48,000,000 acres) the grain-crops occupy only 22A per 

 cent (6 per cent only being wheat, 5 barley, and 9 oats), the 

 green crops, clover, etc., and permanent pasture occupying 

 the remaining T7i per cent. 



