97 
that population will in the future tend equally as in the 
past, to press upon the means of subsistence. 
The so-called intensive farming of the future which 
by some optimists it is hoped will adapt itself to the 
requirements of our industrious posterity, is very 
exhaustive, requiring constant replacement of materials 
abundantly absorbed. Modern tillage, although it has 
not reached the “intensive” stage is so extravagant in 
its demands that the earth is already practically stripped 
of its guano deposits and its remaining formations of 
nitre, mineral phosphates, etc., cannot very long continue 
to contribute to the needs of an insatiable soil. Even 
the fullest utilization of the sewage of. our cities will 
suffice for the enrichment of but a comparatively limited 
area, nor can we adopt the reparative methods of the 
Chinese without a very material sacrifice of the comforts 
and decencies of our civilization. We who stand in its 
fullest effulgence, and accept it as the ordinary and 
natural outcome of our lives need to occasionally avert 
our eyes from its glare and regard the shadows from 
which we have emerged. 
In the world’s history the problem of the subsistence 
of its greatest aggregations of humanity has been 
generally solved by the various agencies of war, 
pestilence and famine. The duration of no agricultural 
nation of antiquity of which we have record was 
sufficient to evolve a distinct civilization, save those 
that occupied the valleys of the Euphrates and the Nile. 
Century after century for thousands of years the annual 
inundation of their vast bottom lands yielded the 
Assyrians and Egyptians a stream of sustenance as 
steady and constant in flow as that of the fluvial arteries 
whose pulsations were the nation’s life. Elsewhere, 
primitive methods of tillage were insufficient to sustain 

England, where scientific farming most generally prevails, absorbs nearly the 
whole of the Chilian nitre production, and receives the greater part of our export of 
fertilizing material, now amounting in monthly value to nearly Roce 
