so Report on the Aqriculture of Belgium. 
for " internal students " (boarders) pay only 28/. per annum, and 
" externals" only 12/. Then the fact that so small a proportion 
of students take their diploma seems to lend probability to the 
assertion made to us that when a man finds that he can make 
nothing good of a lad he sends him to Gembloux ! The reproach 
is not to Gembloux, but to the practice of trying to make an 
" Ingenieur Agricole " of the " fool of the family." 
5. Large Farms versus Small Holdings. — The question which 
we have now to consider is usually asked thus : — Is a national 
system of large farms or a national system of small farms best 
for a country? Our reply to that question would be one with 
which we became only too familiar in Belgium, — " That 
depends." It depends, of course, upon the condition and re- 
quirements of the country. In the case of the two countries 
which first suggest themselves — Belgium and Ireland — it is pro- 
bable, at the present moment, that what is best for one is worst 
for the other. At the outset, therefore, it is necessary to ascer- 
tain precisely what is really the problem to be solved. Is it, — 
under which system is most food produced per acre ; or, under 
which system is the most surplus food produced per acre ; or, 
which system is the best as an employer of labour; or, under 
what circumstances is either one or the other most conducive to 
national prosperity ? 
Almost every Belgian is a firm believer in the superiority of 
la petite culture as a national system ; but his arguments are 
generally based on considerations which are more aesthetic than 
economic, and his facts are derived from a comparison of, say, 
the Pays de Waes with the Polders. Such a comparison, even, 
seems to us illogical ; as the districts compared differ so widely 
in soil that there is no analogy between thein. For instance, 
in the Pays de Waes a farmer can reckon upon getting a 
good crop of turnips by sowing after harvest ; but in the Polders 
it is often very difhcult to grow turnips at all. As for the poetry, 
the " coquetterie," and the other aesthetical attributes of la 
petite culture, so much admired by some writers, they ought not 
to be imported into the stern region of Political Economy. 
Our observations with regard to the production of food led us 
to believe that, cceteris paritms, the larger farms yield a relatively 
larger produce. In Flanders, farms of 20 acres are generally 
better done than those of 5 or 10 ; and farms of 50 acres better 
than those of 20. At the " Concours de Fermes " held this year 
(1869) by the Agricultural Society of East Flanders (the province 
of la petite culture, par excellence), the first prize was awarded to 
a farm of 105 acres, situated in the Pays de Waes, and surrounded 
,by the best types of la petite culture. The s<>cond prize was 
awarded to a farm of acres ; but it should be stated that 
