CH. Il] AGRICULTURAL POLICY 207 



very highest importance to agricultural progress, and to the 

 prosperity of the country, that it be thoroughly provided with 

 transport facilities; there should be at least as complete a 

 network of roads as in such a country as England, so that 

 every little patch of land may have its own frontage. Similarly 

 with drains ; everyone who has not natural drains should have 

 a frontage on a public drainage canal, or reservation for such 

 a canal. Of course, rail may replace road. 



The Forest Department should be called upon to settle the 

 forest reserves, in order that the danger of floods and silting 

 may be as far as possible guarded against, and that agricul- 

 turists may know at an early date that such and such lands are 

 not to be available for agriculture, however desirable for that 

 object. 



The limits of existing villages, estates, forest reserves, 

 settlements of all the different races in the country, and of all 

 alienated lands should be at once determined, beginning in 

 the richer soils. The departments of Public Works, Survey, 

 and any other concerned, should then be called upon to lay out 

 the road reservations, again beginning in the districts most 

 suitable for agriculture. These reservations should form a 

 complete network, and in each mesh of the network the area 

 included should not as a rule exceed about a square mile. In 

 places where the country is flat or nearly so, and quite un- 

 occupied, the roads may best be parallel, demarcating the 

 country into squares, as in the western United States, but in 

 hilly districts they will have to be laid out as best suits the 

 engineering necessities of the case. In districts again where 

 there is already much settlement, the roads should be made to 

 separate the different races, or different types of agriculture 

 there existing e.g., to cut out one section including only 

 natives from another devoted to planting industry, and from 

 a third in which there is a small colony of some immigrant race. 



As has already been pointed out, the road reservations need 

 only be marked upon the map at first, in unoccupied country ; 

 the great thing is to have a map of the country with all the 

 roads clearly marked, so that purchasers of land may know that 

 they will abut upon a road, and that when their land is opened 



