THE LAND SYSTEM OF BELGIUM AND HOLLAND 455 



Yet the Fleming persists in calling the spade a gold mine 

 {De Spa is de Gotidniyn der Boeren) ; and in Lombardy they 

 have a proverb to the same effect : Se Varatro ha il vomero di 

 ferro, la vanga ha la pmita d'oro (" If the plough has a plough- 

 share of iron, the spade has a point of gold "). How is this to be 

 accounted for ? Is it routine or miscalculation ? Neither ; the 

 peasant only means to say that a large increase in the returns is 

 well worth a larger outlay. 



In Lombardy it has been computed that in two fields of the 

 same quality, and manured in the same way, one being worked 

 with the spade and the other with the plough, the returns of the 

 former were to those of the latter as 66 to 28. Assume the 

 produce to be but double, it will make up for twice the excess 

 of expense. 



In Flanders this difference is not very considerable for cereals ; 

 but the Fleming does not grow corn alone. In the same year 

 in which corn comes up in the rotation he has a second crop 

 {r^colte d^rob^e), which of itself is worth three or four times the 

 excess of 25 francs in the cost of spade-work; and if after this 

 he lifts such crops as flax, chicory, tobacco, and colza, returning 

 from 600 to 1200 francs per hectare, the excess in the prelimi- 

 nary outlay dwindles down to a mere nothing. Young, and most 

 English writers on agriculture after him, reason just as if no other 

 crops were grown than cereals ; a mistake with respect to the 

 nature and objects of la petite culture which vitiates all their 

 conclusions. 



I am fully aware that these second crops may be derived also 

 from the plough, and so they are indeed by many Flemish 

 farmers, but then, in the first place, the land is better prepared 

 by the spade for receiving the seed ; and secondly, to weed and 

 to gather crops of this kind much more labour is required, and 

 therefore a larger population, by whom the spade-work too may 

 be done. All these things go hand in hand, there being an 

 intimate connection between such economic factors as large pop- 

 ulation, minute labour, rich produce, small rural industries, like 

 flax-steeping and peeling, preparation of chicory, tobacco, and 

 hops, oil-pressing, etc. It is a system which must be looked at 



