322 LAND REFORM 



public and private, and in them to store wheat sufficient 

 for so many months' consumption. 



The practice of storing wheat to provide, against 

 famine years is as old as the time of the Pharaohs. 

 Rome had her public granaries, but the wheat stored 

 in them was the hard, dry kinds grown in hot climates, 

 mainly in Egypt.^ Wheat is stored for many months 

 in our fortresses in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. 

 But that is a small undertaking compared with an 

 attempt to store enough grain for forty-two millions of 

 people. Besides, in our climate wheat, however dry 

 it might seem, contains moisture that makes it liable 

 to turn sour and mouldy if kept for any length of 

 time. The question of storing grain has been the 

 subject of volumes of agricultural literature in this 

 country for generations past, but it never received 

 much favour. 



One of the very best authorities on the subject, who 

 was in favour of storing wheat, if it could be done, 

 in order to equalize prices and provide against scarcity, 

 concludes that it can only be stored in private hands. 

 He writes : — 



" Neither can that care be taken to preserve corn 

 from corruption, decay, or being diminished or de- 

 stroyed by vermin, in such public magazines, as in 

 private hands, and consequently the goodness of the 

 quality cannot be so w^ell preserved ; for they will 

 seldom be emptied more than once a year ; and all 

 who know the corn-trade know how difficult it is, in 

 this climate, to preserve corn sweet, after it is out of 

 the straw, for the whole year round. "^ 



^ Pliny, in his " Natural History," describes various methods which 

 the Romans adopted for storing grain. Book XVIII (Bohn's translation). 

 ^ "Tracts on the Corn Trade," by Charles Smith, 1804. 

 Jcthro Tull — a noted pioneer in the improvement of agriculture — 



