680 Agricultural Administration in Austria-Hungary. 
The Karst Provinces consist chiefly of poor pasture-lands 
and denuded woods, which the State is trying to reafforest. The 
chief agricultural industries are distilleries of oil aud liqueurs 
(such as Maraschino), the preservation of fruits (which are 
cultivated in a peculiar manner), and silkworm-culture. The 
inhabitants are Southern Slavs. 
Hungary consists essentially of an enormous central plain, 
no doubt once the bed of an ancient lake or inland sea, sur- 
rounded by mountains and woods. Agriculture is throughout in 
a very primitive condition, except on some of the great estates. 
Over a third of the population are Magyars, almost a third Croats 
and Roumanians, and the remainder comprise Germans, Slavs, 
Jews, and other races. 
Details as to the methods of cultivation of the soil and the 
various crops raised must of necessity be postponed for a later 
occasion ; but it may be said generally, that there is every 
degree of " intensity " in the systems practised, from the 
scratching of the earth with a wooden plough to steam-culti- 
vation, and from the use of the flail to steam-threshing by 
electric light. One reason for this great variety is to be found 
in the conditions of land-tenure in the Empire, which it will be 
necessary to describe at some length. 
System of Land-Tenure. 
The dawn of improvement in agricultural methods in 
Austria-Hungary dates from the political troubles of 1848. 
Though villenage had been officially abolished under Maria 
Theresa in the last century, yet up to little more than forty 
years ago the peasants were practically serfs. They were 
legally subject to forced labour, and it was by such labour 
that the estates of the great proprietors, or nobles, were culti- 
vated. Earl Cathcart, in his interesting Biography of Sir 
Harry Thompson, which appeared in Vol. X. (1874) of the 
2nd Series of this Journal, has fortunately preserved for us a 
graphic picture of the state of affairs in the feudal times, from 
the pen of one of the acutest observers and most accomplished 
writers whose contributions have enriched these pages. Sir 
Harry Thompson, then a young man of twenty-five, doing the 
Grand Tour, like so many of his contemporaries, writes as follows 
to his father, on October 22, 1834, from Pesth : — 
There are at present in Hungary two classes — nobles and slaves. The 
Emperor of Austria has Ion"- tried to break through the almost boundless 
privilege of the aristocracy ; but as long as three out of four estates are 
nearly all occupied by nobles, I do not see how he is to bring it about. 
