SEPTEMBER 333 



acre, but I am told that the machine does well enough where the 

 straw stands up strong and straight. 



Sir William Crookes, in his presidential address delivered yester- 

 day to the British Association, draws a fearsome picture of coming 

 wheat famines, which, if we had all of us a proper respect for science, 

 ought to turn our — or rather our children's — hair grey, for I do not 

 gather that the present generation need fear death from hunger. 

 He tells us that ' a permanently higher price for wheat is, I fear, 

 a calamity which must ere long be faced.' It is also a calamity 

 which many farmers would face without dismay. He points out 

 that in the United Kingdom we grow 25 per cent, and 

 import 75 per cent, of the total amount of the wheat we 

 consume annually, and asks, with good reason, how it is proposed 

 to safeguard the country from starvation in the event of a hostile 

 combination of European nations against us, or of any other 

 accident preventing the arrival of our foreign food supply. His 

 own address furnishes a possible answer, for from it it appears that 

 8,250,000 acres of land will grow all the corn our people require 

 for food ; the total area of the United Kingdom being, I believe, 

 about 70,000,000 acres. I suggest that the way to 'safeguard the 

 country ' is by means of a bounty, or in any other fashion, to make 

 it profitable to farmers to put that 8,000,000 and odd acres under 

 wheat, not an overwhelmingly large proportion out of the total 

 acreage available. That it is prices and prices alone which have 

 caused the wheat area to shrink so much in this kingdom I think 

 I can prove. 



In 1852 — I quote from Mr. Henry Rew's pamphlet named 

 ' The Agricultural Position of To-day ' — the acreage under wheat 

 in the United Kingdom was 4,058,731, and in 1885, 2,553,000, 

 the population in the intervening period having increased by 

 8,500,000, while the wheat acerage during the same period declined 

 by 1,500,000. But this is not all. According to the Agricultural 

 Returns, the wheat area in the United Kingdom in 1897 had 

 further decreased to 1,889,161 acres, whereas we shall be fairly 

 safe in assuming that the population has increased by another 



