426 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



great progress in France. Not only is there a great domain, 

 within which la petite culture has exclusive or special advantages, 

 but there is a common domain, for example, in the production 

 of cattle, cereals, and roots, where both may co-exist and prosper ; 

 and there is, again, a domain within which la grande culture has 

 its own superior advantages. There were no less than 154,167 

 farms in France of 100 acres a number not far short of the 

 total number of farms in England at the date to which the 

 latest agricultural statistics go back. There were, again, 2489 

 steam threshing-machines in 1862, as against 1537 in 1852; 

 and it is natural to infer that the chief employment of these 

 was on the larger farms. In the production of sheep, again, la 

 petite culture has not shown itself successful in France ; though 

 it is proper to remark that the decline of sheep between 1852 

 and 1862 is attributed by the highest authorities, in the main, 

 not to the subdivision of the soil (the decline in their number 

 being a new phenomenon and subdivision an old one) but to 

 a number of wet seasons followed by disease, to a contraction 

 of the area of sheep-walks by the reclamation of waste land and 

 the division of commons, to an extension of the surface under 

 wheat, and to an improvement in quality as distinguished from 

 quantity. Nevertheless, it appears certain that minute farming 

 under French methods does not give 'sheep an adequate range, 

 and tends to other productions. Again, both in Belgium and in 

 France the cultivation of the sugar beet, in combination with 

 sugar factories, is found to tend to la grande culture, and no 

 finer, larger farms are to be seen in Scotland than many in 

 France, of which beet is the principal produce. 



In the departments immediately surrounding Paris large farm- 

 ing is to be seen in the highest perfection, of which the reader 

 who has not visited them will find a description in M. de 

 Lavergne's " Economic rurale de la France." Yet, after noticing 

 several magnificent examples, he adds : "While la grande culture 

 marches here in the steps of English cultivation, la petite devel- 

 ops itself by its side, and surpasses it in results." The truth is, 

 as we have said, that the large and the small farming compete 

 on fair terms in France, which they are not allowed to do in 



