OF AGRICULTURE. 



123 



And such crops are not isolated facts ; thus, M. 

 Gros, at Autun, succeeds in cropping 600,000 

 Ib. of beet and carrots, which crop would permit 

 him to keep four horned cattle on each acre. 

 In fact, crops of 100,000 Ib. of beet occur in 

 numbers in the French competitions, and the 

 success depends entirely upon good culture and 

 appropriate manuring. It thus appears that 

 while under ordinary high farming we need 

 2,000,000 acres, or more, to keep 1,000,000 

 horned cattle, double that amount could be 

 kept on one-half of that area ; and if the 

 density of population required it, the amount 

 of cattle could be doubled again, and the area 

 required to keep it might still be one-half, or 

 even one-third of what it is now.* 



* Assuming that 9,000 Ib. of dry hay are necessary for keep- 

 ing one head of horned cattle every year, the following figures 

 (taken from Toubeau's Repartition mttrique des impots) will show 

 what we obtain now under usual and under intensive culture : 



