Britain with the average nineteen to twenty bushels grown in France within the last ten years, the comparison is all in favour of these islands; but such averages are of little value because the two systems of agriculture are totally different in the two countries. The Frenchman also has his picked and heavily manured “twenty-five to thirty acres” in the north of France and in Ile-de France, and from these picked acres he obtains average crops ranging from thirty to thirty-three bushels.48 However, he sows with wheat, not only the best picked out acres, but also such fields on the Central Plateau and in Southern France as hardly yield ten, eight and even six bushels to the acre, without irrigation; and these low crops reduce the average for the whole country.
The Frenchman cultivates much that is left here under permanent pasture — and this is what is described as his “inferiority” in agriculture. In fact, although the proportion between what we have named the “cultivable area” and the total territory is very much the same in France as it is in Great Britain (624 acres out of each 1,000 acres of the territory), the area under wheat crops is nearly six times as great, in proportion, as what it is in Great Britain (182 acres instead of twenty-five or thirty, out of each 1,000 acres): the corn crops altogether cover nearly two-fifths of the cultivable area (375 acres out of 1000), and large areas are given besides to green crops, industrial crops, vine, fruit and vegetables.
Taking everything into consideration, although the Frenchman keeps less cattle, and especially grazes less sheep than the Briton, he nevertheless obtains from his soil nearly all the food that he and his cattle consume. He imports, in an average year, but one-tenth only of what the nation consumes, and he exports to this country considerable quantities of food produce (£10,000,000 worth), not only from the south, but also, and especially, from the shores of the Channel (Brittany butter and vegetables; fruit and vegetables from the suburbs of Paris, and so on).49
The net result is that, although one-third part of the