Introductory 3 



that any reason for denying to nature the name of 

 'farmer'? 



How much of the earth has man brought under 

 cultivation ? In Europe, where he has done most, the 

 proportion varies from little more than a twentieth (in 

 Sweden), to a little more than one-half (in Belgium). 

 Supposing that he farms, or ' improves/ one-tenth of 

 the land all the world over and he certainly does not 

 do more at present what becomes of the other nine- 

 tenths ? It is not a desert, it does not lie idle ; with 

 but few exceptions, indeed, it is covered with crops of 

 one sort or another ; for the world is a green world, 

 not a brown one. 



But, where crops are grown century after century, 

 millennium after millennium, no matter whether they 

 be wild or not, there must needs be tillage, and 

 that of the most thorough kind, fully deserving 

 the name of farming, though it may be carried on 

 without steel ploughs, and so quietly as to escape our 

 notice. 



There are vast pasture-lands here, there are exten- 

 sive forests there ; there are woods, jungles, heaths, 

 moors, downs, but they have all been planted ; and 

 the soil was prepared in the first instance, and 

 has been renewed since, by labourers who are not 

 less truly deserving of the name of labourer than 

 the ploughman, though they do not work with his 

 implements. 



When Captain, afterwards Sir Francis, Head, 

 travelled 900 miles across the Pampas, he saw to his 

 surprise, first, 180 miles of the most luxuriant clover 

 and wild artichokes ; then an unbroken stretch of long 

 grass, 450 miles wide, without a weed; and finally, 



