IV CAPITAL— THE MOTHER OF LABOUR. 157 



seeming pedantic, rather than that of being inac- 

 curate. And the statement that land, in the sense 

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

 essentials of economic production, is anything 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 min- 

 eral 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 Pro- 

 teus, 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.* 



Thus, when we find set forth as an " absolute " 



* In some remarkable passages of the Botany of Sir 

 James Ross's Antarctic voyage, which took place half a 

 century ago, Sir Joseph Hooker demonstrated the de- 

 pendence 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 by water-culture. One 

 might indulge in dreams of cultivating and improving 

 diatoms, until the domesticated bore the same relation to 

 the wild forms, as cauliflowers to the primitive Brassica 



