OF AGRICULTURE. 233 



work of the over-population fallacy. It is pre- 

 cisely in the most densely populated parts of 

 the world that agriculture has lately made such 

 strides as hardly could have been guessed twenty 

 years ago. A dense population, a high develop- 

 ment of industry, and a high development of 

 agriculture and horticulture, go hand in hand : 

 they are inseparable. As to the future, the 

 possibilities of agriculture are such that, hi 

 truth, we cannot yet foretell what would be the 

 limit of the population which could live from 

 the produce of a given area. Recent progress, 

 already tested on a great scale, has widened 

 the limits of agricultural production to a quite 

 unforeseen extent ; and recent discoveries, 

 now tested on a small scale, promise to widen 

 those limits still farther, to a quite unknown 

 degree.* 



The present tendency of economical develop- 

 ment in the world is we have seen to induce 

 more and more every nation, or rather every 

 region, taken in its geographical sense, to rely 

 chiefly upon a home production of all the chief 

 necessaries of life. Not to reduce, I mean, 

 the world-exchange : it may still grow in bulk ; 

 but to limit it to the exchange of what really 

 must be exchanged, and, at the same time, 

 immensely to increase the exchange of novel- 



* See Appendix T. 



