136 
flotes. Communications, anb 
IRcviews. 
THE WORLD’S PRODUCTION AND CON- 
SUMPTION OF FOOD. 
The food-supply of the near future in respect of that portion of the 
human family known as “ bread-eaters ” — a technical term which 
serves to distinguish them from others who, in different climates, 
subsist on rice, yams, fruit, the products of the chase, and so on, 
instead of on bread as it is known to us — forms the subject of an 
interesting pamphlet,* by Mr. C. Wood Davis. The author is a 
statistician well known in America, where his facts and conclusions 
have received a considerable amount of attention, such as has not 
at present been accorded to them in this country. The pamphlet, 
indeed, is a most important as well as a very striking one, if only its 
conclusions shall be borne out by events, which we are led to look 
for well within the limits of the century which is already drawing 
rapidly to its close. We have, consequently, not long to wait for 
the verification, or otherwise, of Mr. Wood Davis’s predictions. 
Here is the opening paragraph, which is the key to what is after- 
wards worked out with considerable elaboration : — 
“Since 1870 food has, relatively to population, been more 
abundant and procurable at a less expenditure of labour than at 
any time in the history of the race, and the absence of war and the 
abundance and cheapness of the means of subsistence have, among 
the industrial classes, stimulated marriage, with the result of unpre- 
cedented additions to the populations of European blood ; and the 
enthusiast, without overmuch reflection, has assumed that humanity 
was entering upon an age when neither war, want, nor scarcity 
would be known. It is, however, very questionable if this view of 
the situation is tenable, and investigations — begun some years since 
by the writer — the results of which are now embodied in tabulations 
of official data, as to the relative rates of increase of the consuming 
populations and the productive power (as shown by the acreage at 
the close of the seventh, eighth, and ninth decades) of the fields of 
the temperate zones render it more than doubtful as to any pro- 
longation of this period of abundance and cheapness.” 
' A Compendium, of the World's Food Production and Consumption. By 
C. Wood Davis. Published by the Author, Goddard, Kansas, U.S.A. 
