September 30, 1909] 



NATURE 



413 



raise it, as most have certainly- not done, at twenty bushels 

 per acre, and nearly double that area if the yield was only 

 that of some of our largest exporters to-day. 



The actual reductions of area in Western Europe are 

 not in the aggregate extensive, although Belgium has 

 seen her grain area shrink from 30 to 25 per cent, of 

 her total surface, France from 28 to 255 per cent., and 

 the United Kingdom from 12 to 10 per cent. The grain- 

 growing capacity of European States varies greatly, and 

 it would be interesting, were the data everywhere avail- 

 able, to see how far we have distinct evidence of an 

 appreciable if not any great advance in the yields extracted 

 from the non-expanding areas under the more recent con- 

 ditions of scientific knowledge. Nowhere is so large a 

 phare of the total surface under grain as in Roumania, an 

 Eastern European State and not inconsiderable w'heat ex- 

 porter, and there, at all events, the total grain acreage 

 developed between 1886 and iqo6 by nearly 23 per cent., 

 and the surface under wheat by 72 per cent. The yield 

 there, according to some official reports, was something 

 over fifteen bushels per acre in the five years before 

 iSqo, and in those ending 1906 it was more than nineteen 

 bushels — the latest year nearly touching twenty-three 

 bushels ; the barley yields of the same State rising from 

 an average in the former quinquennium of thirteen bushels 

 to more than nineteen bushels in the latter. 



In Hungary, another European grain exporter, the 

 wheat acreage has been materially deveio])ed, rising from 

 more than 7,000,000 acres to 0,500,000 in twenty vears to 

 1906, and but slightly receding since, while the yields are 

 also materially greater. 



France, with a drop in wheat acreage of 1,000,000 out 

 of 17,000,000 acres, has between 1884 and 1908 raised the 

 average of her production on a five years' mean from 

 57-8 bushels to 20-2 bushels, and thus turned out some- 

 what more produce from a lessened surface. 



Germany, on a constant but much smaller wheat area 

 of 4,700,000 acres, with a quinquennial average yield of 

 20-3 bushels, would seem to have raised this to 27-9 in 

 1890-1903, touching a still higher level in more recent 

 seasons, when 30 bushels were apparently approached, 

 although some changes in her statistical methods of inquiry 

 may slightly reduce this comparison. 



Some effort to feed new mouths from old acres has thus 

 indeed been made. Nevertheless, without disregarding 

 altogether the qualifications which a careful statistician 

 would deem it his duty to admit, one mav broadlv sav 

 Western Europe looks mainly for the growing needs of 

 her consumers to the still exporting States of Eastern 

 Europe, to the New World regions of North and South 

 America, and in a minor degree to Australasia. 



Before we quit our session here in Winnipeg we may 

 expect to learn something of scientific interest and of 

 economic guidance respecting the response of Canada to 

 the Old World's call. But it is not for grain alone that 

 densely peopled countries turn to the new fields of the 

 West. Probably the geographical conditions of our place 

 of assembly this year will not lead us at all closely into 

 discussion on the variations in the sources and fluctua- 

 tions in the volume of the wool supply, or that of cotton, 

 but the possible development of live stock on the territories 

 of newly settled countries may be expected to come well 

 within our purview, and afford us lessons in the develop- 

 ment of the export trade in meat and dair\' products, and 

 the relation of the Canadian to the surplus of other States. 

 The Royal Statistical Society of London had a paper this 

 summer by an old colleague of mine, Mr. R. 11. Hooker, 

 which, although primarily devoted to the supply of Great 

 Britain herself, and the price of meat in her markets, has 

 a world-wide view of wh.-it is going on all aroimd us in 

 the conditions of production and of transport in a com- 

 moditv as important to human life as wheat itself. 



Fully a quarter of a century has gone by since, on a 

 former visit to Canadian soil at Montreal in 1884, I raised 

 a debate on this subject of the production and consumption 

 of meat, and the various conditions of its transport. The 

 twenty-five years that have passed since then have not 

 rendered that particular topic a less important one for the 

 consumers of old countries or the farmers of new, but 

 ever-varying factors are presented bv the opening of new 

 territories to exploitation and the denser massing of 



NO. 2083, VOL. 81] 



accumulated populations with growing needs, and increas- 

 ing preference for the most concentrated form of aliment. 

 Among the most recent factors to be remembered as in- 

 fluencing one side of the meat-trade future are the 

 admissions of qualified experts in the United States as to 

 the degree in which the growth of population there was 

 beginning to trench upon the meat surplus of that 

 Republic. On the other hand, the producer will not fail 

 to bear in mind the rapidly advancing importance of 

 partially developed areas and the great advantage of the 

 more economic forms of dead-meat transport now adopted 

 in South .Xmerica, and vcill weigh against these the degree 

 in which the herds of the vast prairies of North-Western 

 Canada may be further utilised when questions of handling 

 economically the resultant meat supply may be effectively 

 elaborated. 



To-day, however, and here especially, one cannot but be 

 reminded that in whatever direction we look for the aid 

 of science to stimulate the development of Canadian re- 

 sources, or to help the producers now in these provinces in 

 measuring the probabilities that lie before them, or to 

 summon eager emigrants to the land you have to offer 

 them, there is an intense and ever-engrossing interest in 

 the present and the future of wheat. Alike, therefore, to 

 the statistician and economist on the one hand, and to the 

 experimentalist and investigator on the other, we turn to 

 ask what advice they can give to the farmer of a new 

 country with an area so vast as the North-West of Canada 

 presents, whether and how far and at what rate, with 

 profit to himself and with benefit to the bread consumer 

 across the ocean, he can push the extension of the well- 

 nigh eight million acres of wheat land which the Dominion 

 claims to show her visitors in 1909. 



The problem, important as it is to this particular region 

 where we are met, cannot, however, rightly be treated as 

 a purely Canadian question. It is a problem of world- 

 wide interest and of great magnitude and more complexity 

 than "has been sometimes recognised, for it is none other 

 than the issue of the race between population and pro- 

 duction so far as at least one primary essential of human 

 diet — bread — is concerned. 



Within a year of the last visit to this Dominion of the 

 British Association the question was raised by no less an 

 authority than the then President of that body at the 

 Biistol meeting of i8qS, whether the possible wheatfields 

 of the globe possessed a potential capacity of expansion 

 sutTicient to meet the hypothetical needs of the bread- 

 eaters of even one generation ahead : whether, in fact, a 

 dearth of wheat supply was not already within sight, and 

 by 193 1 would be upon us. The suggestion that the wheat- 

 producing soil of the world was alreadv becoming unequal 

 to the strain put upon it by the multiplication of men was 

 not unnaturally met by a vigorous criticism. The mere 

 suspicion that some day, however, there would not be land 

 enough to go round, that famine could be averted only 

 by the beneficial magic of the chemist, is too vital a 

 possibilitv — even if some of us do not place the date so 

 near or relv so fullv on some of the computations made — 

 not to command a very careful examination of the remedy 

 propounded, the promise of the artificial production of 

 nitrate in such a volume and at such a price as would 

 raise the average of the world's production from 12-7 to 

 211. if not even to 30 bushels of wheat per acre. 



The fixation of nitrogen, not as a dream but as a 

 certainty, was, it will be remembered, claimed by Sir 

 William Crookes as the condition on which the great 

 Caucasian race was to retain its prominence in the world, 

 and avoid being soueezed out of existence by races to 

 whom wheaten bread is not the " staff of life." 



Personallv, I confess I am not so pessimistic as to the 

 surface still available for wheat-growing even without this 

 aid. If we grant that the so-called contributory areas, at 

 a date two or three years before the close of last century, 

 were just what was then stated, that the bread-eating 

 population of that date was rightly guessed at 316,500,000 

 — a much more difficult certaintv to reach in the manner 

 .adopted by the American statistician whose figures were 

 adopted — and that both the growth of population and of 

 " unit consumption " would proceed exactly in the ratio 

 suggested, it tnay legitimately be asked, does it neverthe- 

 less follow that no such increment of area can be looked 



