949 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE. 
year ago, thinks the home demand will soon stop exporting in any 
quantity. At the same time he exhibits a strong array of means for 
strengthening the industry, and considers it ‘ hard to imagine a wheat 
famine in the immediate future.’ Indeed, to fear for the wheat supply 
of many generations to come is pessimistic. According to Mr. Parker, 
we shall have bread enough, but not to spare. 
Some means of increasing the product have been considered. It 
may be admitted that increase by irrigation for export uses is more than 
doubtful, but it may also be claimed that watered lands will largely 
care for the bread of the increasing Cordilleran population. If agricul- 
tural exploration has given us a crop of 50,000,000 bushels of durum 
wheats, the extent of available semi-arid lands suggests the probability 
of a large increase on demand. The production of early wheats will 
increase the Canadian crop more than that of its neighbour, but may 
aid in naturalising the grain at higher altitudes in the west. There is 
an unknown amount of land east of the Mississippi to be rendered fit 
for cereals by drainage, for, as compared with Europe, we of North 
America know nothing about utilising waste lands. 
It is wise, therefore, to accept the dictum of a recent writer} that 
‘the future growth of cereal production will depend more upon im- 
proved methods of agriculture than upon the addition of new lands.’ 
Anyone with faith in the new American agriculture must, it seems to 
the writer, have large faith here. A table of comparative yields per 
acre is not a pleasant sight to a citizen of the United States. The 
record of a few leading countries is appended. It gives the average, 
1899 to 1904 :— 
United Kingdom sen), Oat Hungary as san, eat O 
Germany ay ee eel! United States... eo: I, 
France... 50¢ sv. 6208 European Russia 6 ah 
The yield for Canada in 1904 was 16°8 bushels. In 1908 Canada’s 
yield of spring wheat (the bulk of her crop) was 16°03 bushels, and of 
winter wheat 24°40 bushels. It should be added that in the United 
States the yield for 1904 was 14°5 bushels. For 1908 the yield was 
slightly under 14 bushels. Reasonable confidence in the soil and 
future tillage south of the forty-ninth parallel offer hope of large 
increase in the coming generation. Sixty years ago France was pro- 
ducing less than 15 bushels per acre. A duty on imports practically 
prohibitive has forced the adoption of thorough tillage and made it 
necessary for the French farmer to fertilise, and use every other 
expedient for winning the largest result from his small fields. It may 
be said that labour conditions are very different, but the fact remains 
that these anciently tilled fields have been made to grow a vastly larger 
crop than they raised seventy-five years ago. It is significant that 
the farms of the United States average 150 acres, while the French 
farms average twenty acres. Leroy-Beaulieu refers to our small 
outlay for labour as evidence that we have little intensive cultivation. 
The writer of this paper has elsewhere shown? that east of the arid 
region we had, at the last census, but one agricultural worker for each 
‘E. L. Bogart, Heonomic History of the United States, p. 205. 
** Distribution of Population in the United States,’ Geog. Jour., October 
1903,.p. 383. 
