[36] Average area under wheat in 1853-1860, 4,092,160 acres; average crop, 14,310,779 quarters. Average area under wheat in 1884-1887, 2,509,055 acres; average crop (good years), 9,198,956 quarters. See Professor W. Fream’s Rothamstead Experiments (London, 1888), page 83. I take in the above Sir John Lawes’ figure of 5·65 bushels per head of population every year. It is very close to the yearly allowance of 5·67 bushels of the French statisticians. The Russian statisticians reckon 5·67 bushels of winter crops (chiefly rye) and 2·5 bushels of spring crops (sarrazin, barley, etc.).
[37] There was an increase of 1,800,000 head of horned cattle, and a decrease of 4¼ million sheep (6⅔ millions, if we compare the year 1886 with 1868), which would correspond to an increase of 1¼ million of units of cattle, because eight sheep are reckoned as equivalent to one head of horned cattle. But five million acres having been reclaimed upon waste land since 1860, the above increase should hardly do for covering that area, so that the 2¼ million acres which were cultivated no longer remained fully uncovered. They were a pure loss to the nation.
[38] According to a report read by Mr. Crawford before the Statistical Society in October, 1899, Britain imports every year 4,500,000 tons of hay and other food for its cattle and horses. Under the present system of culture, 6,000,000 acres could produce these food-stuffs. If another 6,000,000 acres were sown with cereals, all the wheat required for the United Kingdom could have been produced at home with the methods of culture now in use.
[39] No less than 5,877,000 cwts. of beef and mutton, 1,065,470 sheep and lambs, and 415,565 pieces of cattle were imported in 1895. In 1910 the first of these figures rose to 13,690,000 cwts. Altogether, it is calculated (Statesman’s Year-book, 1912) that, in 1910, 21 lb. of imported beef, 13½ lb. of imported mutton, and 7 lb. of other sorts of meat, per head of population, were retained for home consumption; in addition to 11 lb. of butter, 262 lb. of wheat, 25 lb. of flour, and 20 lb. of rice and rice-flour, imported.
[40] Agricultural population (farmers and labourers) in England and Wales: 2,100,000 in 1861; 1,383,000 in 1884; 1,311,720 in 1891; 1,152,500 (including fishing population) in 1901.
[41] Round the small hamlet where I stayed for two summers, there were: One farm, 370 acres, four labourers and two boys; another, about 300 acres, two men and two boys; a third, 800 acres, five men only and probably as many boys. In truth, the problem of cultivating the land with the least number of men has been solved in this spot by not cultivating at all as much as two-thirds of it. Since these lines were written, in 1890, a movement in favour of intensive market-gardening has begun in this country, and I read in November, 1909, that they were selling at the Covent Garden market asparagus that had been grown in South Devon in November. They begin also to grow early potatoes in Cornwall and Devon. Formerly, nobody thought of utilising this rich soil and warm climate for growing early vegetables.
[42] Land Problems and National Welfare, London, 1911.
[43] Rural England, two big volumes, London, 1902.
[44] See H. Rider Haggard’s Rural Denmark and its Lessons, London, 1911, pp. 188-212.
[45] The Rothamstead Experiments, 1888, by Professor W. Fream, p. 35 seq. It is well worth noting that Mr. Hall, who was the head of Rothamstead for many years, maintained from his own experience that growing wheat in England is more profitable than rearing live stock. The same opinion was often expressed by the experts whose testimonies are reproduced by Rider Haggard. In many places of his Rural England one finds also a mention of high wheat crops, up to fifty-six bushels per acre, obtained in many places in this country.