496 
AMEEIOAIT AGEIOULTUEIST. 
[Novembbb, 
Farming in Germany. 
Germany may well be classed among the great 
agricultural countries of the earth. More than 
half of Its forty-three million population cultivate 
the soil. Agriculturally considered, Germany is a 
magnificent country. The centre and southern 
portions of the empire are a range of high table 
lands, interspersed with numerous ranges and 
groups of mountains, and abounding in the finest 
timber, growing in a soil rich with the decay of 
A WAYSIDE CROSS. 
centuries. The northern section is a vast sandy 
plain, stretching from the Kussian frontier on the 
east to Holland on the west. A portion of these 
plains is valuable chiefly for grazing and for its de¬ 
posits of peat, but a good half is fertile under suc¬ 
cessful cultivation. It is a peculiarity of the phy¬ 
sical constitution of Germany, that little of the 
earth’s surface is waste. The very forests, grim 
and desolate to look upon, serve to fatten the 
famous pork, the growers of which American 
competition recently threw in such a flutter. 
Although carried out upon an old-fashioned 
GLEANING FODDER. 
plan, farming in Germany is really superior in its 
development to that of any other section of the 
continent of Europe. The sterling industry, in¬ 
telligence and skill of the Germans as an agricul¬ 
tural people, Is shown by the prominent position 
they occupy among the farmers of the New World. 
Emigration brings to our shores no class of agri¬ 
culturists so alive to the possibilities of their pro¬ 
fession, and so ready to labor and expend money 
on its improvements as they. The enormous area 
of the various European States now comprehended 
in the German empire, over two hundred and eight 
thousand square miles, is prolific of nearly all 
the leading crops known to civilized man. The 
vegetable products comprise a very large propor¬ 
tion of the European flora. The north is es¬ 
pecially rich in the ordinary cereals, all of which 
are extensively cultivated and exported, chiefly 
from Wiirtemberg and Bavaria. The latter State 
enjoys its principal distinction, however, from its 
hop crop. Chicory is another of its products, 
which has an European reputation. The chicory 
grown in Bavaria, and throughout the districts be¬ 
tween the rivers Elbe and Weser, supplies the 
place of coffee to more than half the people of 
Europe. While the grains grow best in Northern 
Germany, the central districts are most prolific of 
hemp and flax, madder, wood, safflower, and simi¬ 
lar products, which they export in enormous quan¬ 
tities. The best vine districts are found in the val¬ 
leys of the Danube, Khine, Main, Neckar, and 
Moselle, but the vineyards extend over the country 
in all directions, as far north as Prussia, and pro¬ 
duces wines of excellent qualities. The great 
plains which border the Empire on the North Sea, 
are noted for their magnificent breeds of horses. 
The famously fine wool of Germany is chiefly de¬ 
rived from Saxony, Silesia, and Brandenburg, where 
sheep flocks are bred to a high degree of perfec¬ 
tion. The rich alluvial flats of Mecklenburg and 
Hanover are celebrated for their cattle, and all the 
forests of Northern and Central Germany produce 
a superior and famous breed of swine. South 
Germany still abounds in various kinds of game. 
Standing next to Great Britain in tlie care and 
success with which its agricultural possibilities 
have been cultivated, Germany is in many senses 
better circumstanced than that country, as far as 
its agriculturists are concerned. There is far less 
abject and grinding poverty among the lower order 
of agricultural laborers, and a more permanent 
prosperity among the middle-class farmers. Not a 
little of this is due to the Agricultural Colleges, 
established by the States, and which, by educating 
the youth of the country, have made farming as 
honorable a profession as medicine or the law. 
Several of the States have also done much to ad¬ 
vance agriculture by the periodical agricultural 
exhibitions, which promote the adoption of the 
latest improvements in machinery, and extend 
among the lowest order of peasants a practical 
knowledge of the advancement of the times. 
Many of the great German land-owners cultivate 
their enormous estates personally, and live lives of 
an almost patriarchial character, devoted to the 
improvement of their teeming acres, and of the 
people who populate and work them. The State 
also owns vast tracts, which are cultivated by 
lessees or foremen, as the case may be, and whose 
agriculture is carried on by an army of laborers, 
with military strictness and precision. The mid¬ 
dle-class farmers in many instances live upon farms 
which have belonged to their families for centuries. 
These farmers constitute a sort of rural aristocracy, 
like that of the country squires in England. As in 
all the rest of the Old World, however, the farmer’s 
lot in Germany is one of much work and little 
pleasure. Upon a German farm of the more 
modest order, every one works—women as well as 
men, and children as soon as they are able to be 
made useful. Labor begins with the dawn, and 
ends with the day. The country is a great garden, 
bursting with the wealth of its soil products, 
but it is so because those who populate it are an 
industrious, skillful, and tireless people, who per¬ 
mit no toil to stand between them and success. 
The sectional peculiarities of the rural popula¬ 
tion of Germany render it impossible to give any 
description of farm life which shall apply ^o the 
whole country. Broken up for centuries into petty 
States, the people of the Empire still preserve the 
costumes, manners and customs which character¬ 
ized them when they were separate peoples. Trav¬ 
eling from farm to farm, you suddenly And your¬ 
self confronted by farmers whose dress, speech, 
and manner of living, are all distinctly different 
from those you have just left. You have simply 
A LANDED PROPRIETOR. 
crossed the border from one of the old States into 
another. Germany is one great nation now, but it 
will still be generations before the German people 
become one homogeneous population like our own. 
No matter what their differences of habits and liv¬ 
ing are, however, you never find the German far¬ 
mer plunged in ignorance. He may be uneducated 
and rude, but he is a man beneath his rough skin; 
a man who starves neither himself, his family, nor 
his brutes, who does not keep his children in ig¬ 
norance to save a few dollars, and who does not 
refuse to learn how to improve his farm, or the 
condition of his family and flocks, because the old 
way, which was good enough for his father, is 
good enough for him. 
One universal trait of the German farmer is 
worth especial notice. Nowhere in the world is 
there to be found a community more moral and 
sincere in its cultivation of the domestic and per¬ 
sonal virtues. Be the district Protestan t or Catholic 
in its faith, its denizens will be found to practice 
that faith with the fervent and uncompromising 
THE FARM BOY. 
devotion of true Christians. Honoring his God, 
and the divine laws, it is no wonder the German 
farmer has won for himself the reputation for pure 
manhood, inviolable honor and patriotism he en¬ 
joys. Integrity and industry are well rewarded. 
