FRENCH AGRICULTURE.

Western Star, Issue 346, 24 April 1880, Page 6 (Supplement)

FRENCH AGRICULTURE.

■The chief feature that Strikes a ; stranger irtff run across France from Boulogne or Cabas to Paris is the smallness of the holdifigis and - the plodding industry and frugality of the people. There seems an, albost total absence of the large arid imposing farmhouses and buildings that furnish and adorn the<riiral'districts'throughout Britain. The .fields are generally small, and the farmhouses, if there be any, seem more like mere cottages. ‘ Petite farming is the order of the country, and each man tilling his own land, With the help of bis wife and children, appears’ the general rule. As a rule the land seems well farmed, though the corn crops do not come- upj either in appearance dr yield, to those in England ; but the industry of the people is very 1! great. Agricultural hands seem to keep no hours; from dawn to: dusk 'appears to be the only limit to their working day • at least I have never : been out so early or so late in France hut I have found ben; women, and horses at work Op the land. f ’ The stroke ican hardly he described as a quick one, but they are .always at it; ! Seldom indeed is the back straightened; even to look upon the passing carriage orTrain. Like Tennyson’s Brook,' the French peasant proprietorsor occupiere appear to keep on and on for-ever, that is as long as the light allows them.;. ’ And thitfi industry seems associated with the utmost frugality ; their clothing is of the simplest and most primitive form and materia], and the French housewives oi mothers seem to have carried the Art of patching clothing to the highest pitch of perfection.:- In some specimens I have seen it would be difficult to say with certainty which was the original niece as distinguished from the patches. 'They spend but little in furnishing, and almost notliingxin the ornamentation of their-homes.-They live also in The most frugal way. It has;been said that two Scotchmen could live wheye one Englishman wotild starve." Be thafc as it may, it is probable that three Frenchman could live on an allowance all too'small for the- most frugal Scotchmen. This fact seems to solve the problem how It happens that a populous country like France—with an average 5 'production per acre less, than England/’can yet/ expbrt breadstuff's. The producers consume so 1 much less.: The tiny bags of flour throughout France are at once a symbol and proof of thetrugal habits of the nati'oh : .*' r it would be interesting to know the different ratioof flour; consumption between ‘the Average Frenchmen arid Englishmen. J f ' Of cburse the farmer eats more vegetables, and per-haps-fruit., But he certainly eats less and but little meat. French bread is] in : fact, made to please -the eye rather than fill the stomach* It is so light as to be full of airy nothingness within. This exemplary industry and frugality benefits; the; agriculturist Tn 1 two -ways* They lessen the cost of production and limit consumption—-thus enabling the grower to: spend less Arid get more money:-. By some such means the tillers of the soil not only manage to live, but To save. It is said that the majority of them reach to that-great: summit of French ambition— ' the having money in the French Bentes. It is as certain that many of thefn rushed to the aid of the Government to help topay the enormous war indemnity demanded by Germany, and that much l , more wassubscribed by Frenchmen than was needed by the Government of the day, a Striking proof of the. almost unbounded; resources and great wealth of the nation. V The facts stated iby Mr Gladstone- at Mid Calder the other day about the rapid increase of agricultural income in France also deserves the serious attention of all classes in England. ■o In the thirty-four years from 1842 to 1876 the agricultural: income of England: ionlyo rose fromL 42,000,000 to L 52,000,000; ah increase of 20 per cent, in thirty-four; years.--Th i 1851 the agricultural income of France was L 76.000,000, in 1864 : Ll 66,000,000, or an increase of 40 per cent, in’ thirteen years. The increase in France was 3 percent, per annum ;• the increase in England about one half per cent. It ought to be interesting, and also instructive and useful, to inquire how far the difference is affected *by sugair culture in France. in these times of agricultural: depression it seems important that a crop that ough t to be at once turnedinto money is hardly grown in Erigland. The spirited attempt made by Duncan a few years since, -to introduce sugaf-makirig at Layehham Tailed—as it were,-through a fluke. A threatened prosecution, for the killing, t of fish in a stream that h&rdly ever a fish had been seen in, caused the removal of the works." ' .

Ten poinds an acre for roots would have enabled many s one to meet bis Michaelmas rent this year, who was unable to pay it with his stained barley and 'damaged wheat.

In France towards this end of October, most of the holders were busy storing bud.

carting their, .sugar beets, and the mills were ; hard at work .converting it. into sugar. The crops had less tops and smaller roots as a rule than grown in England, and the yield did hot seem heavy—about ,15 ton' an acre or so, judged by a general survey. Men and women were busy harvesting them, and, the cows in a few cases picking up the tops and. eating eaiting them with a relish. ■'. 1 was also milch struck with the paucity of stock. Comparatively few cows, scarcely any .bullocks, and but few sheep were Having seen the great show of French stock in Paris last year, this scarcity of stock bn the farms was the more striking. Little, however, of the country traversed could be <?escribed as grazing land ; and, judging from the quantity and quality of the beef and mutton now so plentiful in the Parisian markets, the production and consumption of meat is largely on the increase. Though there is probably much truth in the remarks of an intelligent American, who remarked that his countrymen and the English consumed all the best of everything in Paris, and were the only purchasers of luxuries, and that the whole .fabric of Parisian society would fall to pieces, its trade ’ and,"commerce come to a standstill within less than-. a week'. were these two customers to hold their generous hands. Truly strange, he concluded, the Parisians arid the French in general, even in good circumstances, live on two .francs a day, and never exceed it, and as for jewellery and other .articles of vertw,. they buy none.—D.-T. Fish. ~, , :