512 



NA TURE 



[September 2c, iqoo 



Among countries where the areas are still greater in propor- 

 tion to the resident population it may not be without interest to 

 group together — as regards their present density — persons, 

 cattle, sheep and swine. 



1 In 1890. 2 In 1888. 



Such figures serve to emphasise the vast difference between 

 the flocks maintained in our Australasian Colonies and the other 

 countries in this group. 



The animal wealth of England by herself, omitting the Celtic 

 fringes above quoted, may be compared with a nearer competitor. 

 Belgium has 893 persons to 1000 acres, England 925 ; and 

 Belgium has 195 head of cattle and 160 head of swine, but only 

 32 sheep, on an average area of this size in her little kingdom, 

 against 144 cattle, 64 pigs, and as many as 488 sheep in England. 

 Were the comparison to be made more closely yet, the cattle 

 stock of Belgium agrees closely- in point of density with, 

 say, the particular division of our area comprising the north- 

 western counties of England, which have 194 cattle to 1000 

 acres, or considerably more than the great butter-exporting 

 country of Denmark, and at least a very close approach to the 

 197 head per 1000 acres which are to be found in the fat 

 pastures of the Netherlands. 



These limited comparisons on single points of agricultural 

 production in single countries do not, I know, satisfy the de- 

 mands which are often made for world-wide surveys and com- 

 parisons on a larger scale. I confess I somewhat distrust the 

 strength and due coherence of the statistical bricks on which 

 these heroic conclusions are built up. It is most usual in corn 

 trade journals, and the practice is sometimes followed in 

 serious debate and reproduced in the year-books of the United 

 States Government, to give a yearly picture of at least the world's 

 wheat crop. For the close comparison of one season with 

 another much must depend on the sufficiency of the weakest 

 item in the account, and weakness is sure to creep in some- 

 where when crops are estimated on varying systems, at different 

 dates, and on authorities of unequal value. The definitions 

 adopted by one calculator as to the limits of the " world " vary 

 from those of another, and commercial estimates, as they are 

 called, may be, at the discretion of the computer, substituted 

 for or adopted in the absence of official data, so that the guesses 

 at a single country's harvest may differ more widely from each 

 other than would account for the total margin between one 

 year's aggregate supply and another, to the confounding of 

 satisfactory conclusions as to what is really happening. Last 

 but not least of the obstacles to uniform grouping of harvests in 

 complete years — ending as these years do at different periods — 

 is the fact, not to be overlooked, that wheat harvests are being 

 gathered somewhere in every month in the twelve. 



One is driven back then to the attempt to rest opinions on 

 the growth of one form of culture or another on recorded acre- 



NO. 



1612, VOL. 62] 



age, rather than assumed production. Yet even here a good 

 illustration of the difficulty of any extensive compilation may be 

 found in the tentative memorandum Sir Robert Giffen put 

 before the last Royal Commission on Agriculture as indicating, 

 with many necessary reservations and qualifications, the 

 relative movements of grain area, live stock, and population in 

 the twenty years before 1893. Briefly, the earlier totals brought 

 into conjunction for this purpose were made up, as regards the 

 population figures taken to represent the starting-point of 1873, 

 from the statistics of groups of countries and colonies at dates 

 for the most part about 187 1-3, but in some instances ranging 

 back to 1866 and on to 1881, and aggregating 365,8cx),ooo per- 

 sons. Against these were set a total of 461,800,000 persons, 

 enumerated, for the most part, about 1890-93, but in a few 

 instances, where later data were wanting, going back to 1880-88, 

 the growth of population between the totals being 26 per cent. 



The acreage about 1873 ^"^ about 1893, contrasted with these 

 figures, included wheat, rye, barley and oats, but not maize — a 

 larger crop than any of the last three. The countries contrasted 

 were limited necessarily by the extent of information, and the 

 list did not include all of which the population was accounted 

 for, the increases per cent, being 28 per cent, in the case of oats, 

 19 per cent, in the case of wheat, 5 per cent, in the case of 

 barley, with a decrease of 5 per cent, in rye. It should be 

 observed, however, that the calculation as to the increase of 

 wheat would have been much closer to that of population had 

 not a very large area, nearly stationary in amount, been credited 

 to India and Japan at both dates ; the local population of these 

 Asiatic countries being disregarded as, generally speaking, non- 

 wheat-eating. 



It was only as an outline pointing the direction in which 

 inquiry might be useful that Sir Robert Giffen called attention 

 to these figures, which, as he acknowledged, were of the 

 roughest possible description, and rather suggestive of a doser 

 inquiry, which should take account of the difference between 

 the consumptive power of the countries aggregated, the varying 

 productive power of nominally equal areas of surface, and the 

 varying type of live stock maintained. 



If the wheat acreage table, in the memorandum referred to, 

 is examined in detail, a very effective picture of the difficulty of 

 exact comparison as between any two given dates is incidentally 

 presented. Out of twenty-four countries enumerated (including 

 Canada and Australasia as units) a twenty or twenty-one years' 

 comparison is only really effected in five cases — Russia, the 

 United States, France, '.United Kingdom and Australasia. In 

 five other instances the period dealt with is only from seventeen 

 to eighteen years ; in three other cases only fourteen or fifteen 

 years. In Canada, Egypt and Denmark, the comparison will 

 be found to be more limited still, and only to cover eleven 

 or twelve years ; while in the Argentine Republic, where the 

 recent expansion of wheat-growing has been prominent, the 

 available statistics allowed only of a comparison of two periods, 

 no more than nine years apart. For seven other countries 

 the wheat acreage was necessarily either omitted or inserted 

 as presumably the same as both the earlier and the later date. 

 Had the retrospect been confined to the cases where a twenty 

 or twenty-one years' comparison was possible — and these, after 

 all, included the most important and typical wheat-growing 

 communities — the increase would have stood, not at 19, but at 

 24 per cent., or scarcely below that of the growth of population 

 generally. This result is reached without taking account of 

 any South American figures, where the increase of area is 

 relatively much greater, or of those of India, where the com- 

 parison is difficult and the acreage growing but slightly. But, 

 further, it is to be remembered that if the comparison of the 

 memorandum were to be continued up to 1899, instead of 

 stopping at 1893, the figures would have shown that wheat- 

 growing had apparently made a new start in the five important 

 countries for which the long comparison was possible, as many 

 million acres having been added in the past six years as 

 in the whole preceding twenty — a result which may afford 

 much occasion for suspending our final judgment and no little 

 warning of the danger of single year contrasts. 



Since the above calculations were before the Commission 

 there has been an extension of 10,000,000 acres in the official 

 estimates of wheat areas in the United States, and 5,400,000 

 acres in Russia, while, although official details are still wanting 

 beyond 1895 for Argentina, nearly 3,000,000 acres more were 

 in that year accounted for in that republic ; and there is an 

 impression, apparently well founded, that by the present time 



