40O THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



fact the sun but rarely rises. And as to organisation, German 

 farmers, so it is said, drop automatically into their proper 

 places and perform their proper functions, whereas our 

 farmers could not be got to work together, and if they were 

 to, would work at cross purposes. 



Now, never had two popular superstitions less foundation. 



To take the first, no doubt our climate is different from 

 that of Germany, Hungary, even of Belgium and the Nether- 

 lands ; and for some purposes unquestionably it is less kind. 

 We cannot compete with Germany and Hungary in the 

 production of Johannisberg or Tokay, nor yet in the raising 

 of wheat of the most bakeable description. No more, once 

 more, have we the sharp, biting, but weathering and dis- 

 integrating frost of the German winter, which prepares the 

 soil admirably to make a good seed-bed, and kills vermin and 

 destroys noxious growths. On a balance of distinguishing 

 features, however, the advantage rests altogether with our- 

 selves. There is more that, thanks to our climate, we can 

 do that the Germans cannot, at any rate satisfactorily, than 

 what they can do and we cannot. H we lack sunshine, we 

 have moisture, such as Continentals envy. And we have a 

 far more equable temperature favourable to such crops as 

 roots, spread over a considerably longer period, and therefore 

 we have a much longer working time for our teams and our 

 hands. " It makes nearly a couple of months' difference 

 to me," so complained my friend, the late Mr. Butler, the 

 Duke of Lucca's English agent at Weisstropp in Saxony, 

 not a particularly exposed place, ' ' during which I have to 

 keep my teams and men idle." And if wheat grows up here 

 a little coarse and damp, and grapes will not ripen in the 

 open — even on the sunny South Coast which produces ripe 

 figs — green crops on the other hand grow lustily, indeed 

 better than anywhere else. To come from the Continent 

 back to England after one's summer holiday is, in ordinary 

 years, like moving into another, fresher world. And the 

 luxuriant green which there greets one's eyes does more than 

 look pretty. It means a more pushing and longer continued 

 growth of grass, and clover, and roots. Our superiority in 

 the growth of potatoes, instanced by Mr. Middleton, is 



