The World’s Production and Consumption of Food. 143 
been, chiefly in consequence of that competition, seriously reduced ; 
in many cases becoming barely sufficient to afford subsistence, and in 
not a few vanishing altogether, until bankruptcy has supervened. 
At the same time it is true that the farmers of America have not 
been benefited by the keen competition which they have developed ; 
rather have they suffered as much as, if not more than, their British 
contemporaries, and the expected reduction, or even extinction, of 
exports of American farm products will find a welcome in farming 
circles of the United States quite as warm as that it will meet with 
in this country. In prospect of the change, and in sympathy with 
it, the price of good farming land in America is already advancing, 
and I have found, even in Mexico, a general opinion to the effect 
that, in a short time hence, a great improvement will have taken 
place in the value of farm products and, consequently, in the value 
of land as well. There is room in the North-West of Canada for a 
great extension of cultivation, and in a few years’ time we shall be 
drawing our supplies of wheat from this region rather than from 
the United States. If, however, the rapidly increasing population 
of the States shall during this century want feeding in part from 
other countries, it is from Canada that the food will chiefly come. 
In the event of Mr. Davis’s predictions being verified, the farms of 
England, which now go “ a-begging,” will readily find tenants, and 
the heavy soils of Essex will be found to have derived an increase 
of fertility from fifteen or twenty years’ rest. 
I have said enough to show the importance of the publication 
under review, and much interest will probably be taken in closely 
watching the development of the predictions which it contains. 
These may or may not have a firm foundation in existing facts, and 
may or may not be verified ; but at all events there is in the air, 
particularly on the other side of the Atlantic, a more or less definite 
belief that, before the close of the current century, the condition 
and prospects of farmers will have undergone a marked change for 
the better. 
J. P. Sheldon. 
SURGICAL TREATMENT OF THE LARCH 
DISEASE. 
During a visit paid me in April 1891 by Mr. Carruthers — a visit 
chiefly devoted to the study of the larch disease — it was suggested 
that it might be worth while trying what surgical treatment would 
do to check or cure the evil. Accordingly some young trees were 
selected in a plantation that had been formed in 1887, where the 
disease had made itself very manifest. Trees were chosen in which 
the cankered spots were low down, as the lower the disease strikes 
a tree the more detrimental is it to its future value. 
Firstly, the knife was used freely, care being taken to cut away. 
