644 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 
the wastes. These were brought under cultivation when labour was cheaper, 
often without calculation of the cost because the work was done piecemeal at 
times when the men would otherwise have been idle. Were any strict account 
to be framed, the reclamation probably did not pay its way for many years, and 
it has only become possible again because of modern advances in science and 
machinery. As examples of the type of land, I may instance the Bagshot 
Sands on which, in north Surrey, in Berkshire and Hampshire, and again in its 
southern development in the New Forest, lie so many thousands of acres of 
uncultivated heath. No systematic reclamation has taken place, but every- 
where farms have been carved out on this formation, often by the industry of 
squatters, and within reach of London the vast supplies of town manure which 
used to be available have converted some of it into fertile land. The crystalli- 
sation of common rights into charters for public playgrounds, its growing 
appreciation for residential purposes, will now always stand in the way of the 
utilisation of most of the Bagshot Sands for agriculture, but further afield there 
are many areas of similar character. The Lower Greensand is perhaps equally 
discounted by its residential value, but on the Tertiaries of Dorset, the Crag 
and Glacial Sands of Suffolk and Norfolk—the brak, the Bunter Beds of the 
Midlands, lie many expanses of waste that are convertible into farming land, 
just as Lincoln Heath and much of the beautifully farmed land of Cheshire have 
been gained for agriculture within the past century. Equally possible is an 
attack upon the sandy areas, warrens or links, behind the sand-dunes on many 
parts of the English and especially the Welsh coasts; not all of them are 
wanted for golf, and many can be fitted for market-gardening. Of old the only 
way of dealing with such land was merely to clear it, burn the rubbish, and 
start upon the ordinary routine of cultivation, but for a long time on such a 
system the crops will hardly pay their way from year to year, and the permanent 
deficiencies of the soil in lime and mineral salts remain unrepaired. In Cheshire 
the enormous value of marl and bones in such a connection was early recognised ; 
it has been the later discovery of the potash salts that renders reclamation a 
commercial proposition to-day. The method that is now followed is to begin by 
clearing the land of shrubs, burning off the roughest of the vegetation, and 
turning over a shallow layer in the summer, leaving the heathery sod to the 
killing and disintegrating action of sun and frost until the following spring. 
The manure is then put on—lime or ground chalk or marl as before, basic slag 
and kainit, and the sod is worked down to a rough seed-bed on which lupins 
are sown, to be ploughed in when they reach their flowering stage. The growth 
of the lupins makes the land, they supply humus to bind the sand together and 
retain moisture, they draw nitrogen from the atmosphere and with the 
phosphoric acid and potash form a complete manure for succeeding crops. 
Sometimes a second crop of lupins is ploughed in, but usually the land is put 
immediately to an ordinary rotation of rye, oats, potatoes, and clover. When 
the heath-land is divided among small tenants in an unreclaimed state, cropping 
often begins without the lupins, the necessary nitrogen being imported by nitrate 
of soda, but for years the land shows inferior results. Only the tenant can 
rarely afford to lose the year the lupin crop involves, and so great is the demand 
for land in Germany that the State finds it preferable to let the tenant reclaim 
than to reclaim for him, and charge him as rent the cost of the more thorough 
process. And now as to the finance of the operation : the reclaiming down to the 
ploughing in of the lupin crop costs from 5/. to 6/. an acre, the bare heath costs 
from 5/1. to 7. an acre, the reclaimed land after a few years’ cultivation would 
sell at 207. to 307, an acre. Meantime the State has probably made a free grant 
for drainage, looking to get some interest back in increased taxation; the local 
authority has also made roads for which the increased rating due to a new 
agricultural community must be the only return. It is a long-sighted policy 
which will only find its full justification after many years, when the loans’ have 
all been paid off and the State has gained a well-established addition to its 
agricultural land and its productive population. In comparing English with 
German conditions there are certain differences to be taken into account—in the 
first place the work of reclamation will be dearer in England because of the 
higher price of labour, then the land will not be so valuable when won because 
the higher scale of prices for agricultural products enhances the price of land 
