2l6 



NATURE 



[October 21, 191 5 



future of the human race. While it is the glory of 

 the medical profession, for example, that it assists in 

 preventing a wastage of life that could not but retard 

 human progress, we must remember that technolog)'^ 

 helps to produce what medicine and surgery help to 

 preserve. The great increase in population which 

 began in the middle of the eighteenth century was 

 directly due to mechanical invention. Indeed, 

 the application of science to industry not only 

 renders possible a rapid growth of population, 

 but it exempts an ever-growing proportion of this 

 increasing population from the need for incessant 

 physical toil. Moreover, all that acceleration of 

 human progress which results from the increasing 

 national expenditure on the education of the people 

 would cease with any interruption of the march of 

 technological invention. 



Every improvement, then, which the technologist 

 may be able to make in the direction of cheapening 

 production — reducing, for example, the cost of a brake 

 horse-power hour — will help to increase the number 

 of men whom the community can spare for the study 

 of classical literature in order to keep the thought of 

 our time in touch with the best of the thought of 

 ancient Greece and Rome ; it will help to increase, 

 too, the number of those who can be spared by this 

 generation to devote their lives to scientific research, 

 to widen the scope of human thought, to teach men 

 more of the works and ways of God, and to obtain 

 the knowledge which technologists of the future will 

 apply for the benefit of generations not yet born ; 

 and, most important of all, it will help to support the 

 seers and the prophets on whom we so largely depend 

 in the weightiest affairs of human life. 



THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 

 SECTION M. 



AGRICULTURE. 



Opening Address by R. H. Rew,^ C.B., President 

 OF the Section. 



Farming and Food Supplies in Time of War. 



Before considering the position of farming in the 

 present war, we may briefly glance at its position 

 when a century ago the nation was similarly engaged 

 in a vital struggle. 



From February, 1793, until 1815, with two brief 

 intervals, we were at war, and the conflict embraced 

 not only practically all Europe but America as well. 

 The latter half of the eighteenth century had witnessed 

 a revolution of British agriculture. The work of 

 Jethro Tull, "Turnip" Townshend, Robert Bakewell, 

 and their disciples, had established the principles of 

 modern farming. Coke of Holkham had begun his 

 missionary work; Arthur Young was preaching the 

 gospel of progress; and in 1803 Humphry Davy de- 

 livered his epoch-making lectures on agricultural 

 chemistry. Common-field cultivation, with all its 

 hindrances to progress, was rapidly being extinguished, 

 accelerated by the General Inclosure Act of 1801. A 

 general idea of the state of agriculture may be ob- 

 tained from the estimates made by W. T. Comber 

 of the area in England and Wales under different crops 

 in 1808. There were then no ofificial returns, which, 

 indeed, were not started until 1866; but these esti- 

 mates have been generally accepted as approximately 

 accurate, and are at any rate the nearest approach we 

 have to definite information. 



I give for comparison the figures from the agricul- 



1 Slightly abridged bv the author. 



tural returns of 1914, which approximately correspond 

 to those of the earlier date : — 



1808 



Acres 



3,160,000 



861,000 



2,872,000 



1,149,000 



1,807,498 

 1,55^.670 

 2,223,642 

 2,558,735 



2,077,487 



340,737 



36,661 



16,115,750 



NO. 



1399, VOL. 96] 



Wheat 



Barley and rye ... 



Oats and beans 



Clover, rye-grass, etc 



Roots and cabbages cultivated 



by the plough 1,150,000 



Fallow 2,297,000 



Hop grounds 36,000 



Land depastured by cattle ... 17,479,000 



The returns in 19 14 comprise a larger variety of 

 crops than were cultivated in 1808. Potatoes, for 

 instance, were then only just beginning to be grown 

 as a field-crop, and I have included them, together 

 with Kohl-rabi and rape, among "roots and cabbages." 



The population of England and Wales in 1801 was 

 8,892,536, so that there were 35I acres under wheat 

 for every hundred inhabitants. In 1914 the population 

 was 37,302,983, and for every hundred inhabitants 

 there were 5 acres under wheat. 



The yield of wheat during the twenty years ending 

 1795 was estimated at 3 qr. per acre^; in 1914 it was 

 A qr. per acre. The quantity of home-grown wheat 

 per head of population was therefore 8^ bushels in 

 1808, and I5 bushels in 1914. Nevertheless, even at 

 that time, the country was not self-supporting in 

 breadstuffs. In 1810, 1,305,000 qr. of wheat and 

 473,000 cwt. of flour were imported. The average 

 annual imports of wheat from 180 1 to 1810 were 

 601,000 qr., and from 18 11 to 1820 458,000 qr. Up to 

 the last decade of the eighteenth century England was 

 an exporting rather than an importing country, and 

 bounties on exports were offered when prices were 

 low, from 1689 to 1814, though none were, in fact, 

 paid after 1792. 



During the war period we are considering, the 

 annual average price of wheat ranged from 495. 3d. 

 per qr. in 1793 to 126s. 6d. per qr. in 1812 ; the real 

 price in the latter year, owing to the depreciation of 

 the currenc}', being nc^t more than ioo5. In 1814 the 

 nominal price was 745. ^d. and the real price not more 

 than 545. per qr.^ The extent to which these high 

 and widely varying prices were affected by the 

 European war has been the subject of controversy. As 

 we mainly depended on the Continent for any addition 

 to our own resources, the diminished production during 

 the earlier years in the Netherlands, Germanv, and 

 Italy, and in the later years of the war in Russia, 

 Poland, Prussia, Saxony, and the Peninsula, j-educed 

 possible supplies. At the same time the rates of 

 freight and insurance, especially in the later years of 

 the war, increased very considerablv. Tooke mentions 

 a freight of 30Z. per ton on hemp from St. Petersburg 

 in 1809. On the other hand, a powerful impetus was 

 friven to home production, which was stimulated by 

 Government action and private enterprise. Inclosure 

 was encouraged by the General Inclosure Act of 1801, 

 and 1934. Inclosure Acts were passed from 1793 to 

 i8i>. The schemes for increasing and conserving 

 food supplies were various. The Board of Agricul- 

 ture, for example, offered prizes of 50. 30, and 20 

 guineas respectively to the persons who in the spring 

 of 1805 cultivated the greatest number of acres — not 

 fewer than 20 — of spring- wheat.* In 1795 a Select 

 Committee recommended that bounties should be 

 granted to encourage the cultivation of potatoes on 



2 Report of Select ^ommifee on the nr-ans of prom^tinj? the cultivation 

 sind improvement of the w.iste, unirclosed and unproductive lands of the 

 kingdom. 170=;. 



3 Portor's " Progress of th- Nation," by F. W. Hirst, p 183. 

 * " Annals of Agriculture," 18^5. 



