142 RUKAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



million hectares of wheat sown under the large cultiva- 

 tion, and seven and a half millions of the small, seventy 

 millions of hectolitres (twenty-four million quarters for 

 twenty-one million acres). Under the name of corn is 

 included, in addition to wheat, inferior grain, such as 

 rye and barley ; the same confusion is still common in 

 many parts of France. As rye was more generally culti- 

 vated at that period than wheat, these seventy millions 

 of hectolitres may be thus approximatively apportioned 

 twenty-five millions wheat, and forty-five of rye and barley. 

 Quesnay adds to this, for the breadth of oats, seven 

 millions of setiers, or about eleven millions of hectolitres. 

 At the present day the production of wheat has almost 

 tripled, that of rye and barley remains the same, and 

 oats have quadrupled: in 1750, potatoes were scarcely 

 known ; the valuable addition which they furnish for the 

 food of cattle and men was then entirely wanting. 

 Few dry vegetables were cultivated, and many other 

 products, which are at this day a source of wealth, did 

 not then exist. 



According to Quesnay, the number of horned cattle 

 was five millions, or just half of what we have now. 

 As to quality, they were much inferior. The number 

 slaughtered for human food was four to five hundred 

 thousand annually, now it is ten times that number ; 

 and the cattle of that period, having to seek their own 

 subsistence on the arid wastes, bare fallows, and swampy 

 meadows, could not be compared in weight to those 

 of the present day, which are fed on sound grass, or 

 stall-fed upon roots and artificial fodder. The cattle in 

 some of the mountainous regions, where the old system 

 still prevails of feeding them on the coarse natural pas- 

 ture, may give an idea of all the cattle of that period. 

 Sheep were certainly neither more numerous nor propor- 



