RETROSPECT AND FORECAST 213 



richest lands, to grow wheat, or indeed any kind of 

 grain. A striking testimony to the decadence of 

 our agricultural industry is given in the fact that 

 since the year 1870 two thousand square miles in 

 Ireland, that had been redeemed from the waste and 

 brought under culture, have been again restored to 

 the waste as not repaying the cost of cultivation. 



But a century hence matters will have materially 

 altered. The four countries I have particularised will 

 then contain an aggregate population of two hundred 

 and eighty millions. If the progress of science be 

 assumed to have added, which I think is not very 

 probable, 2 per cent, to their food - producing 

 capacity, they will be capable of supporting from 

 their own resources one hundred millions of people, 

 and food for the support of one hundred and eighty 

 millions will have to be imported. But whence are 

 they to receive so prodigious a supply of imported 

 food ? The present European granaries, Eussia and 

 Hungary, will no longer have food to export, as their 

 own populations will then consume all the food their 

 soil can produce. 



A century hence the agricultural resources of the 

 United States will for the most part be required 

 to support its own population ; and the hour will 

 not be far off when that population shall have grown 

 so great as to need all the food that can be produced 

 between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. The re- 

 sources of the Dominion of Canada and of Australasia, 

 which appear illimitable now, will not appear to be 



