IV CAPITAL — THE MOTHER OF LABOUR 157 



ducer," just as we may talk of the daily movement 

 of the sun. But, as I have elsewhere remarked, 

 propositions which are to bear any deductive 

 strain that may be put upon them must run the 

 risk of seeming pedantic, rather than that of being 

 inaccurate. And the statement that land, in the 

 sense of cultivable soil, is a producer, or even one 

 of the essentials of economic production, is any- 

 thing but accurate. The process of water-culture, 

 in which a plant is not " planted " in any soil, but 

 is merely supported in water containing in solution 

 the mineral ingredients essential to that plant, is 

 now thoroughly understood ; and, if it were worth 

 while, a crop yielding abundant food-stuffs could 

 be raised on an acre of fresh water, no less than 

 on an acre of dry land. In the Arctic regions, 

 again, land has nothing to do with " production " 

 in the social economy of the Esquimaux, who live 

 on seals and other marine animals; and might, 

 like Proteus, shepherd the flocks of Poseidon if 

 they had a mind for pastoral life. But the seals 

 and the bears are dependent on other inhabitants 

 of the sea, until, somewhere in the series, we come 

 to the minute green plants which float in the 

 ocean, and are the real " producers " by which the 

 whole of its vast animal population is supported.^ 



1 In some remarkable passages of the Botany of Sir James 

 Ross's Antarctic voyage, which took place half a century ago, 

 Sir Josejdi Hooker demonstrated the dependence of the animal 

 life of the sea upon the minute, indeed microscopic, plants 

 which float in it : a marvellous example of what may be done 



