64 EXPLOITATION OF PLANTS 
became possible. A class devoting itself to fishing, 
for instance, could arise, arid the fishermen exchange 
their fish for the products of agriculture which they 
needed; this would react on the agriculturists, who 
would now devote themselves to growing more of 
certain crops, and would gradually find that they got 
a better return per square yard than by growing every 
kind of crop; this would gradually bring about a cer- 
tain specialisation among themselves, one man growing 
one thing, another another, and exchanging by means 
of the markets that would gradually spring up. In this 
way, provision of means of transportation acts as the 
third differentiating factor in agriciltural progress. 
A later stage was that the land was owned by large 
owners, who had come into possession of it in various 
ways. To possess a large area is obviously of no par- 
ticular use if it cannot be cultivated, and this difficulty 
was got over in different ways, perhaps most often by 
a system of cultivation on shares, the land being leased 
out to different cultivators, who pay to the landowner, 
say, 50 per cent. of the resulting crop as his rent. 
Sometimes forced labour was employed, but the share 
system was more usual; hired labour only appeared 
at a later time. 
The next stages in agricultural progress, therefore, 
after the provision of land and crops, are the provision 
of means of transport and of capital—which enables 
the purchase of land, tools, etc., to be carried on, and 
allows of waiting for the return to come in after the 
sale of the produce. 
In Europe there is now comparatively little of the 
old style of peasant cultivation, though it is tending to 
