AGRICUL,TURE ON THE RHINE. 25 



of their general market, which the new means of com- 

 munication have created, the influx of manufacturing 

 prosperity, and the increase of population, which never 

 fail to accompany good means of transport. From oflicial 

 documents it appears that the consumption of meat in the 

 Prussian towns, where a slaughtering tax is levied, rose 

 from 78f lbs. per head of the population in the period 

 1827—1839, to 83|lb3. between 1840—1842. The 

 population of the fifteen towns of the Rhenish province 

 paying the slaughtering tax increased in the last-named 

 three years from 245,635 to 256,274, or 4A per cent., 

 although, from the low rates of English prices, the 

 Rhenish manufacturers were badly off in that inter- 

 val. The period is rapidly approaching when the German 

 farmer will no longer dread that any of the crops raised 

 in the projDortions we have described, will, in good 

 years, be left as a drug upon his hands. Instead of 

 calculating upon his distillery to carry off the super- 

 abundant produce, he will be induced to study the effect 

 of improved utensils and of careful stock-husbandry to 

 supply the demand of his accumulating neighbours. 

 That he has a large field before him, and that the 

 resources of these fine countries are far from being 

 strained, our readers have already perceived. They 

 would unquestionably have long since furnished a large 

 supply for exportation, if the duties imposed by corn- 

 importing countries on foreign grain had not confined the 

 ])roduction of wheat on a large scale to more distant 

 lands with exuberantly rich soils. The Rhenish far- 

 mers, and especially the landowners, may however be 

 congratulated on the circumstance that no unnatural sys- 

 tem of cultivation has been fostered by partial legislation. 



