670 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 
BRISBANE. 
FRIDAY, AUGUST 28. 
The President delivered the following Address :— 
Tue fact that this Address is to be delivered in the capital city of a State in 
which semi-tropical, and even tropical, conditions prevail suggests some con- 
sideration of the future of countries in which vegetative development, and 
therefore the production of food, can attain such a level as is possible here. 
At the outset let me remind you of two prime facts in the natural history of 
man. In the first place all civilisation is based upon food supply; no other 
industry is creative, and the wealth of a community might almost be measured 
by the amount of time that remains at its disposal after it has secured, either 
from its own land, or by exchange, the food it needs to live upon. Secondly, we 
must look forward at no very distant date, as the life of nations goes, to the 
exhaustion of those capital stores of energy in the world—coal and oil—on 
which the current industrial system is based. How long the stores may last 
is a matter of dispute, but 500 years is a liberal estimate, and we can be pretty 
sure, in a world in which prophecy is notoriously unsafe, that nothing remains 
to be discovered which can take the place of those savings from the energy of 
bygone epochs that are represented by coal and oil. With the passing of 
industrialism the importance of agriculture will grow, and while the world as a 
whole will still be able to support the same number of people as are fed hy 
agriculturists of to-day, great readjustments of the population will have to 
be effected, according to the productive powers of the land in each country. 
Should population continue to increase, and the spread of organised and stable 
government ensures that it will grow, there must come a demand for the better 
utilisation of the land, and for a higher production of food than at present 
prevails; indeed, even in the last few years symptoms of this increasing demand 
for food have been in evidence. 
Let us see what the land can be made to do at the present time in the way 
of supporting population, and for that we must turn to the Kast, where long 
experience of the art of intensive agriculture goes hand in hand with an 
optimum climate and a population of maximum density. Rural Japan is 
reported to carry a population of 1,922 to the square mile, entirely supported 
by agriculture, but maintaining in addition its quota of officials and indus- 
trialists. Even this number is exceeded in China, where a farm of two-and- 
a-half acres will support a family of eight to ten people, and where, in some 
special cases, as on the island of Chungming, the population living wholly on 
the land may rise nearly to 4,000 per square mile. Compared with these figures 
the density of population on Western land is trifling. The United States is 
said to maintain no more than 61 per square mile of its cultivated land, 
England something over 90, Ireland about 120, and Belgium, perhaps the most 
intensely cultivated of European countries, not more than 200 per square mile 
of cultivation. Now, these enormous densities of rural population are accom- 
panied by a very low standard of living; the people, if strong and healthy, exist 
on the very margin of sustenance. To take a cash standard, an experienced 
rural labourer in China cannot command more than 6d.a day, on which he will 
support a family. But for this small pay of 6d. a full day’s work will be 
obtained; indeed, such a day’s work as the white man would find it almost 
impossible to give under the climatic conditions prevailing. 
Such a state of continuous toil seems to be the necessary outcome of an 
individualistic system of farming in countries with no great industrial outlets, 
where the pressure of an increasing population results in continued subdivision 
of the land. Of its kind Chinese agriculture is magnificent, as far as one can 
judge from the accounts; the land is made to do an extraordinary duty, bearing 
two or three full crops a year; waste is non-existent, and long experience has 
taught the farmers to anticipate in practice some of the most recent discoveries 
of science in the way of conserving and recuperating the fertility of the soil. 
Though no statistics are available, the land seems to have been raised to its 
