WASTE LANDS IN EUROPE: 

 THEIR UTILIZATION. 



AN ARTICLE CONTAINING, POSSIBLY, IDEAS FOR 



AMERICAN READERS. 

 BY LODIAN LODIAN, Paris, France. 



Often does the writer exchange notes with an eminent English 

 irrigation engineer on land-reclamation; and recently in response to 

 inquiry, I "brot him out" very fully on the important subject of land- 

 reclamation in relation to its being a possible solution of the unem- 

 ployed question. So closely do his views agree with mine, that I re- 

 produce them (after slight editing) almost in extenso, their concise- 

 ness admitting of this. 



I believe that a few rough notes on the land and farming will be 

 useful to many of your readers, more especially in deference to the 

 proposal to establish new laws by which portions of the land of Eng- 

 land should be devoted to the welfare of the state and benefit of some 

 of the people who worked it. Persons unacquainted with agriculture 

 are apt to hear spoken of or read of waste land as if it were wasted 

 land, and believes that in this country there are thirty millions of 

 acres of waste land capable of tillage, or of being made into arable 

 land. 



If we first inquire into the situation, condition, and present use of 

 these thirty millions of acres of land we shall be able to judge of the 

 capabilities of improvement and prospect of remuneration to the 

 workers under the best system of culture and cost of colonization aided 

 by the government. Experience and observation prove that "waste 

 land" is inferior in position and quality to the adjacent land the best 

 land, with good staple adjuncts (as roads and water) having been col- 

 onized by our forefathers years ago. 



To begin with, the woodland say ten million acres. A small 

 portion of it could not be devoted to better uses than at present, yield- 

 ing the finest oak, ash, elm, and other useful timber. But the greater 

 part of the woodland of England yields timber suitable only for fenc- 

 ing and the roughest farm purposes,, resulting from the nearly gen- 

 eral neglect to trim and prune trees annually when very young; also 

 from not planting young trees, but allowing them to grow up from ' 

 the old stubs instead, by which there is a growth of inferior timber. 



When young, these tracts of woodland are known as copice or un- 

 derwood useful for a variety of purposes in domestic manufacture, 



