210 PLANT PRODUCTS 



industrialized farms are permitted to take one or two pupils. 

 Common sense would suggest that other industrialized farms 

 should secure the services of such men. Nevertheless, if 

 industrialized farms are to be pushed at a great pace, the 

 number of men who are qualified to take a managership 

 will hardly be sufficient to go round. Fortunately, however, 

 we are in a much better position to-day to develop this farm 

 than we were twenty years ago. 



There is a great contrast between the state of affairs of 

 agriculture in the British Isles and in Germany, Holland, and 

 Belgium during the last twenty or thirty years. It is only 

 in Great Britain that land has been going out of cultiva- 

 tion. On the other hand, one may find even in Great 

 Britain, that some farmers have put small amounts of land 

 into cultivation. There are to be found, all over the country, 

 what Mr. A. D. Hall very aptly calls the *' little farms bitten 

 out of the waste," for one finds them in Northumberland 

 quite as frequently as in the south country places he mentions, 

 and precisely as he describes it for the south, so it is true 

 for the north, that this work has been carried out in a slow 

 and unscientific manner. Ver}^ little attempt has been made 

 to find out what the moors require. For the most part, 

 they have been surrounded b3^ walls, and stocked with cattle. 

 Sometimes the scheme happened to succeed, and sometimes 

 success was very small indeed. No serious attempt appears 

 to have been made to discover whether the infertility was 

 due to the absence of lime, or phosphoric acid, or potash, or 

 whether it was due to bad drainage. Of recent years a 

 few farmers have used basic slag on such moor enclosures, 

 but their experience has been little copied by their neighbours, 

 and the process of bringing in new land has been carried out 

 in a very haphazard manner. In considering the question 

 of taking up new land to-day, the high prices of labour 

 undoubtedly is a serious difficulty. Not merely is the labour 

 expensive, but the provision of new buildings seems almost 

 prohibitive. On the other hand, the increase in agricultural 

 machinery offers some compensation. Not merely does it 

 reduce the actual cost, but it speeds up the work, and 



