250 
WiUouls and ilieW Cultivation. 
packing purposes where baskets and hampers might be employed j 
but with the fact before us that our importations both of the raw 
material and of manufactured basketwork are every year large, 
and that the industries which provide occasion for the use of 
baskets and hampers are extending and increasing, the subject 
of the cultivation of Willows as a source of profit deserves and 
demands closer attention than it has hitherto received. 
Edmund J. Baillie. 
Woodbine, Itpton Park, Chester. 
ADVANTAGES IN AGRICULTURAL 
PRODUCTION. 
Advantages in agricultural production may be divided into two 
categories — natural and artificial. The first division includes 
advantages of climate, soil, and situation or aspect ; the second, 
acquired knowledge, skill, nearness to markets, rail or water 
transport facilities, cheap labour, protective duties or bounties, 
currency bonus, co-operation, security of property, and legisla- 
tive action. Cheap land may belong to either division — to the 
former, if its cheapness is the result of abundance ; and to the 
latter, if it is due to human consideration. Natural and 
artificial advantages in production may be concurrent or con- 
flicting. In the former case they carry all before them ; in the 
latter, the balance is in favour of one division in some instances, 
and of the other in different cases. 
The importance to the agriculturist (a term which will 
include the horticulturist throughout this article) of paying due 
attention to advantages of both kinds is obvious, and yet many 
lamentable failures are constantly resulting from the disregard 
of this precaution. Mistakes, however, are not always avoidable, 
because our knowledge upon the subject is greatly lacking in 
comprehensiveness and precision alike. I am not presumptuous 
enough to imagine that I can supply the lacking information. 
My object is rather to compare advantages in agricultural 
production so far as they are recognised, and to point to certain 
reasonable deductions which may be derived from such recogni- 
tion. It will be necessary, moreover, as a rule, to keep to 
generalities, for the complications involved in the details of my 
subject are almost endless, and would require a volume for their 
fqll elaboration. 
