18 



Flanders and Belgium. — In Flanders, both Belgian 

 and French, you are probably prepared for an admission 

 on my part, of great agricultural skill and success. I am 

 compelled, however, to confess my own impression to be, 

 that a great portion of what has been written upon Flemish 

 husbandry, partakes of the character of a romance.* The 

 cultivators of Belgian Flanders have the merit of raising 

 fair crops from certain tracts of poor and sandy soil, of 

 husbanding and applying manures so as to keep such land 

 in culture, and of skilfully varying their crops so as to 

 prevent a premature exhaustion. But no knowledge of the 

 general principles of agriculture is widely diffused among 

 them. The improvement of wet and of heavy clay soils, ex- 

 cept by open ditches, is almost unknown. Improved imple- 

 ments and thorough drainage, and modern modes of manur- 

 ing, and some small instruction at least in the elements of 

 science as applied to agriculture, have still to be introduced 

 among them, before they can rank in general knowledge or 

 in skilful practice with the farmers of Scotland or England. 



And, indeed, in Belgium as in France, the progressive 

 subdivision of property opposes a growing obstacle to that 

 general amelioration of agricultural practice, which the 

 wants of a numerous people and the progress of knowledge 

 demand. Where the average extent of properties and 

 farms over a whole province is already reduced to about 

 an English acre, we cannot look for the introduction of 

 any of those improvements which demand the purchase of 

 new or comparatively costly implements, the rearing and 



ing operations by which the Maremme were dried, see Mcmorie sul 

 Bonijkamente dclle Maremme Tuscane, by Fernando Tarlini, Florence, 1838. 



t V Agriculture Pratique de la Flandre, par M. J. L. Van Aelbroeck, Paris. 

 1830, and Memoire tur V Agriculture de la Flandre Francaise et sur V Economie 

 Rurale, pas J. Cordier, Paris, 1823. 



