APPENDIX 



Memorandum on the Reclamation of Land by 

 Mr. A, D. Hall, M.A., F.R.S. 



The area of land under cultivation in England rose 

 year by year from the date at which exact records 

 begin up to 1892 ; since then it has declined similarly 

 year by year, about 800,000 acres in all having been 

 lost. In the main this loss represents urban encroach- 

 ments which have no longer been balanced by the 

 bringing into cultivation of portions of the margin of 

 waste still existing in the country. The work of 

 reclaiming, which had been most active towards the 

 middle of the last century, proceeded in two ways, 

 occasionally as a landlord's enterprise on a large scale, 

 but more generally as the tenant farmers, with or 

 without improving leases, gradually drained and 

 cleaned up the rough land adjacent to their holdings. 

 The process stopped with the great fall in agricultural 

 prices ; the cost of the labour to clear the land ceased 

 to be repaid by the value of its produce, for at that 

 time labour was the main almost the only item in the 

 cost of reclamation, and no new factor had arisen to 

 alter the situation. In Germany, however, the march 

 of events has been very different ; the cultivation of 

 the waste land — ^moor and heath — has been taken in 



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