The Irish consume a greater proportion of vegetables than the English, even since the improvement by emigration after 1851; many of these live a beggarly life upon half an acre, and even less, and seldom taste animal food. The quantity of land under cultivation in Belgium is about fifteen-seventeenths of the whole, which gives an average of about two acres to each person, or the same as in England. In these two countries, the people consume more meat than in Ireland, and the amount of land occupied for pasturage is in nearly equal proportions in Belgium and England. In France, the average of cultivated land is 1⅔ acre; in Holland, 1⅘ acre to each person.
AREA AND VALUE OF ARABLE LAND IN CHINA.
If the same proportion between the arable and uncultivated land exists in China as in England, namely one-fourth, there are about six hundred and fifty millions of acres under cultivation in China; and we are not left altogether to conjecture, for by a report made to Kienlung in 1745, it appears that the area of the land under cultivation was 595,598,221 acres; a subsequent calculation places it at 640,579,381 acres, which is almost the same proportion as in England. Estimating it at six hundred and fifty millions—for it has since increased rather than diminished—it gives one acre and four-fifths to every person, which is by no means a small supply for the Chinese, considering that there are no cultivated pastures or meadows.
In comparing the population of different countries, the manner of living and the articles of food in use, form such important elements of the calculation, in ascertaining whether the country be overstocked or not, that a mere tabular view of the number of persons on a square mile is an imperfect criterion of the amount of inhabitants the land would maintain if they consumed the same food, and lived in the same manner in all of them. Living as the Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, and other Asiatics do, chiefly upon vegetables, the country can hardly be said to maintain more than one-half or one-third as many people on a square mile as it might do, if their energies were developed to the same extent with those of the English or Belgians. The population of these eastern regions has been repressed by the combined influences of ignorance, insecurity of life and property, religious prejudices, vice, and wars, so that the land has never maintained as many inhabitants as one would have otherwise reasonably expected therefrom.
Nearly all the cultivated soil in China is employed in raising food for man. Woollen garments and leather are little used, while cotton and mulberry cultivation take up only a small proportion of the soil. There is not, so far as is known, a single acre of land sown with grass-seed, and therefore almost no human labor is devoted to raising food for animals, which will not also serve to sustain man. Horses are seldom used for pomp or war, for travelling or carrying burdens, but mules, camels, asses, and goats are employed for transportation and other purposes north of the Yangtsz’ River. Horses are fed on cooked rice, bran, sorghum seed, pulse, oats, and grass cut along the banks of streams, or on hillsides. In the southern and eastern provinces, all animals are rare, the transport of goods and passengers being done by boats or by men. The natives make no use of butter, cheese, or milk, and the few cattle employed in agriculture easily gather a living on the waste ground around the villages. In the south, the buffalo is applied more than the ox to plough the rice fields, and the habits of this animal make it cheaper to keep him in good condition, while he can also do more work. The winter stock is grass cut upon the hills, straw, bean stalks, and vegetables. No wool being wanted for making cloth, flocks of sheep and goats are seldom seen—it may almost be said are unknown in the east and south.
No animal is reared cheaper than the hog; hatching and raising ducks affords employment to thousands of people; hundreds of these fowl gather their own food along the river shore, being easily attended by a single keeper. Geese and poultry are also cheaply reared. In fishing, which is carried on to an enormous extent, no pasture-grounds, no manuring, no barns, are needed, nor are taxes paid by the cultivator and consumer.
While the people get their animal food in these ways, its preparation takes away the least possible amount of cultivated soil. The space occupied for roads and pleasure-grounds is insignificant, but there is perhaps an amount appropriated for burial places quite equal to the area used for those purposes in European countries; it is, however, less valuable land, and much of it would be useless for culture, even if otherwise unoccupied. Graves are dug on hills, in ravines and copses, and wherever they will be retired and dry; or if in the ancestral field, they do not hinder the crop growing close around them. Moreover, it is very common to preserve the coffin in temples and cemeteries until it is decayed, partly in order to save the expense of a grave, and partly to worship the remains, or preserve them until gathered to their fathers, in their distant native places. They are often placed in the corners of the fields, or under precipices where they remain till dust returns to dust, and bones and wood both moulder away. These and other customs limit the consumption of land for graves much more than would be supposed, when one sees, as at Macao, almost as much space taken up by the dead for a grave as by the living for a hut. The necropolis of Canton occupies the hills north of the city, of which not one-fiftieth part could ever have been used for agriculture, but where cattle are allowed to graze, as much as if there were no tombs.
Under its genial and equable climate, more than three-fourths of the area of China Proper produces two crops annually. In Kwangtung, Kwangsí, and Fuhkien, two crops of rice are taken year after year from the low lands; while in the loess regions of the northwest, a three-fold return from the grain fields is annually looked for, if the rain-fall is not withheld. In the winter season, in the neighborhood of towns, a third crop of sweet potatoes, cabbages, turnips, or some other vegetable is grown. De Guignes estimates the returns of a rice crop at ten for one, which, with the vegetables, will give full twenty-five fold from an acre in a year; few parts, however, yield this increase. Little or no land lies fallow, for constant manuring and turning of the soil prevents the necessity of repose. The diligence exhibited in collecting and applying manure is well known, and if all this industry result in the production of two crops instead of one, it really doubles the area under cultivation, when its superficies are compared with those of other countries. If the amount of land which produces two crops be estimated at one-fourth of the whole (and it is perhaps as near one-third), the area of arable land in the provinces may be considered as representing a total of 812 millions of acres, or 2¾ acres to an individual. The land is not, however, cut up into such small farms as to prevent its being managed as well as the people know how to stock and cultivate it; manual labor is the chief dependence of the farmer, fewer cattle, carts, ploughs, and machines being employed than in other countries. In rice fields no animals are used after the wet land has received the shoots, transplanting, weeding, and reaping being done by men.
In no other country besides Japan is so much food derived from the water. Not only are the coasts, estuaries, rivers, and lakes, covered with fishing-boats of various sizes, which are provided with everything fitted for the capture of whatever lives in the waters, but the spawn of fish is collected and reared. Rice fields are often converted into pools in the winter season, and stocked with fish; and the tanks dug for irrigation usually contain fish. By all these means, an immense supply of food is obtained at a cheap rate, which is eaten fresh or preserved with or without salt, and sent over the Empire, at a cost which places it within the reach of all above beggary. Other articles of food, both animal and vegetable, such as dogs, game, worms, spring greens, tripang, leaves, etc., do indeed compose part of their meals, but it is comparatively an inconsiderable fraction, and need not enter into the calculation. Enough has been stated to show that the land is abundantly able to support the population ascribed to it, even with all the drawbacks known to exist; and that, taking the highest estimate to be true, and considering the mode of living, the average population on a square mile in China is less than in several European countries.