917 
The piat is, will any vegetation grow on such poison 
mountains—for so the tailings heaps may well be called. 
I shall value yous opinion on this serious subject. 
I am, etc., 
(Signed) R. W. ADLAM. 
The Director, 
Royal Gardens, Kew. 
DLXV.—AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION. 
It i common fallacy to suppose that the state of things 
but spoken of as “agricultural depression” is peculiar to 
this country. It isa universal phenomenon of which the stress 
experienced in the United Kingdom is only a particular phase. 
It extends to cultural industries in every part of the world, 
though, from local causes, it is felt in some places more severely 
than in others. Nor is there any reason to suppose that it will 
diminish or be alleviated by palliative expedients. The causes 
are too deep-seated and permanent to be regarded as temporary. 
regar 
Mankind will, in fact, have more and more to reconcile itself to a 
new order of industrial conditions. iei process will, no doubt, 
entail much individual loss and suffering. But this is inevitable, 
and is the accompaniment of all great changes. The problem 
i el 
The funda 
levelling influence on prices of modern facilities of transport. 
This includes a aide range of €—— all conducing to the 
same end, and, in the long run, producing the same result. Such 
are :—the extension of railwa ways, the oUBdbrét on of inter-oceanie 
canals, the use of x: for ship- -building, and the Application of 
steam to navigatio: 
How these erm ‘act i is well illustrated by the following extract 
from the American Garden and Forest of September last 
(p. 391) :— 
^ Since 1890 the wheat production of the country (United 
States) has been more than twice as great as it was in 1 and 
there is no doubt that these large crops, wided to the stili of 
bushels which are exported from India and the Argentine pipe: 
have supplied the world with ptum heat than it can eat, or, at 
least, more than it is willing to pay for, and to this it sae "be 
added that Russia, Hungary and Spain have multiplied their 
production still more rapidly, while Australia threatens to put 
rnillions of bushels upon the markets ac the northern hemisphere. 
But this is only one factor in a great change which has been 
going on all over the world during the last half of the century. 
In agriculture as well as in manufactures, science with inventions, 
which come from increased knowledge, have 80 cheapened pro- 
duction of every sort that the world we live in is quite a different 
Machinery has so multiplied the power of a single man to 
cultivate and harvest and transport crops that a bushel of wheat 
can be and turned into flour in the distant west 
y dé oa n/n tag De ME diu Jum Qu a al 
