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CHAPTER X. 



SCIENCE WITH PRACTICE, 1845-1873. 



The year 1845 divides the two periods of ' Science with 

 Practice.' It inaugurated a new era. It marks the transi- 

 tion from farming by extension to farming by intension. 

 Hitherto British farmers had mainly supplied the wants of 

 a growing population by increasing the area of cultivation. 

 After the General Enclosure Act of 1 845 they were practi- 

 cally excluded from this resource. They could only meet 

 new demands by developing to the utmost the productive- 

 ness of the soil. It is true that within the last forty years 

 upwards of 800,000 acres have been taken into cultivation 

 in England and Wales ; but this increase is counter- 

 balanced by the agricultural land which has been occupied 

 by the growth of towns, roads, and railways. The farming 

 area remains, roughly speaking, what it was in 1845. 

 Between 1801 and 1851 the population of Great Britain 

 and Ireland increased by ten million new claimants for 

 food, and the old supply of land was supplemented by four 

 million additional acres. After 1845 British farmers were 

 driven to depend for profits upon high farming. For the 

 next thirty years they held their own by superior science 

 against the vast corn-fields of Russia, the virgin soils of 

 America and Canada, the alluvial plains of Egypt, and the 

 favourable conditions of labour which enable India to grow 

 grain with unequalled cheapness. During that period 



