RECLAMATION OF WASTE LAND. 421 



authorities call upon the owner of the land either to work 

 the minerals himself or else to give the applicant access to 

 the land for the purpose of embarking on the work on his 

 ov^Ti account, allowing the landlord a royalty according to 

 an arrangement to be made. But reclamation of land is 

 a different thing. Since the days of the early Popes Roman 

 Governments have endeavoured by such means to bring 

 the wild stretch of the Agro Romano, at one time the granary 

 of Rome, under cultivation once more. Pope Julius II, 

 who was no mincer of words or shirker of action, issued a 

 particularly stringent decree directed against those high- 

 born dukes and marquesses who share among them the 

 ownership of that immense tract of territory, which is now 

 in its barrenness a disgrace to Italy. No one can drive 

 across that extensive dismal desert without feeling real 

 pain at its utterly neglected condition, while real wild 

 horses running about masterless are pointed out to him 

 as a curiosity in Europe. Whatever Popes might decree, 

 however, the dukes and marquesses invariably discovered 

 means of frustrating. If they could not resist cultivation 

 by settlers, they could put spokes into their wheels very 

 effectually in the matter of getting rid of their produce. 

 The recent law of 1883, from which great results were 

 looked for, has proved scarcely more effective. But that 

 law marks a turning point in the history of the Agro, which 

 it may be well for us to note. It was passed in the interest 

 of co-operative settlement societies claiming land in the 

 Agro for reclamation or settlement. Co-operative societies, 

 so it was thought, would be better able than single unas- 

 sisted individuals to form village settlements. Their com- 

 bination would provide some guarantee for good and per- 

 manent settlement work, and for overcoming the obstacles 

 placed in their way by recalcitrant nobles. To such the 

 law was made to appl}^ Later legislation on the same 

 lines has proved more effective, and the desert is now very 

 slowly beginning to recover the appearance of land in a 

 civilised country, coming to be at any rate thinly studded 

 with little co-operative settlements, designed to become 

 borgate, by means of a-fflttanze collettive. The Government 



