Variation in i/ie Price and Supj/li/ of PVheat. 1G3 
artificial grasses, 7,000,000 of acres against 5,700,000 acres ; 
and of pasture and meadow land, 16,300,000 acres against 
22,200,000 acres. France has 5,400,000 acres under vineyards. 
The various schemes for raising capital, by means of credit, to 
supply the " great want " of agriculture will probably prove 
abortive, until a population, larger and better fed, admits of a 
more expansive system of farming. 
PUOVINCES OF SOUTHEEX EuSSIA. 
These provinces are peopled generally, though scantilj", by 
an agricultural and industrious race. Labour is lower than in 
America and land equally cheap, and, in favourable seasons, 
equally productive. These are the oldest corn countries in 
Europe. Herodotus describes South Russia as " a plain country 
of a deep soil ;" the inhabitants were "husbandmen, who sow 
wheat not for food, but sale." The first kings Avere the sons of 
Jupiter and a daughter of the river Borysthenes (the Dnieper). 
It was in their reign that the sacred gift of the golden imple- 
ments of husbandry fell down from heaven. The historian 
qualifies a rather fabulous narrative with the remark, " if any 
man think these things credible, he is at liberty ; for me, I am 
obliged to write what I have heard." But though the plough 
was not so directly the gift of heaven as the ancient inhabitants 
believed, the art of husbandly was practised by them a thousand 
years before the invasion of the country by Darius, and their 
corn was carried to the markets of three continents, as it is 
still, feeding the diverse races that dwell on the shores of the 
Mediterranean and finding its way to our own coasts. 
In glancing through the Reports, a great and almos.t fatal 
drawback to agricultural development forces itself on the atten- 
tion. The climate is one of extremes, and the harvests are 
consequently exceedingly various. We read, " the main diffi- 
culty which agriculture will have to contend with will be the 
droughts to which this country is subject." The disturbed 
state of agriculture during the " transition from serfdom to 
free labour," the " scanty population," the occasional destruc- 
tion of the crops by locusts and rats, the insufficiency of the 
means of communication ; the want of roads and the difficult 
navigation of the rivers ; the difficulty of access to the ports, 
the dangerous navigation and the expense of lightering owing 
to the bars of sand, the filling up of the harbours by the 
drift brought down by the rivers, — all these are hindrances 
which may be overcome by time, capital, and labour ; but the 
disadvantages of the climate will be felt more severely in pro- 
portion as agriculture progresses and wages and other expenses 
M 2 
