to sow wheat in rows, by means of a bamboo tube adapted to the plough, European writers objected, of course, to this method under the pretext that it would require too much labour. It is the same now with planting each seed apart. Professional writers sneer at it, although all the rice that is grown in Japan is planted and even replanted. Everyone, however, who will think of the labour which must be spent for ploughing, harrowing, fencing, and keeping free of weeds three acres instead of one, and who will calculate the corresponding expenditure in manure, will surely admit that all advantages are in favour of the one acre as against the three acres, to say nothing of the possibilities of irrigation or of the planting machine-tool, which will be devised as soon as there is a demand for it.97
More than that, there is full reason to believe that even this method is liable to further improvement by means of replanting. Cereals in such cases would be treated as vegetables are treated in horticulture. Such is, at least, the idea which began to germinate since the methods of cereal culture that are resorted to in China and Japan became better known in Europe. (See Appendix O.)
The future — a near future, I hope — will show what practical importance such a method of treating cereals may have. But we need not speculate about that future. We have already, in the facts mentioned in this chapter, an experimental basis for quite a number of means of improving our present methods of culture and of largely increasing the crops. It is evident that in a book which is not intended to be a manual of agriculture, all I can do is to give only a few hints to set people thinking for themselves upon this subject. But the little that has been said is sufficient to show that we have no right to complain of over-population, and no need to fear it in the future. Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want, under any climate and upon any soil, have lately