Page:EB1911 - Volume 09.djvu/947

Rh the Spanish coast and in Sicily, and appears less frequently in southern Italy and Greece.

Special interest attaches to the two main bread crops of Europe, wheat and rye, the average annual production of which in the different countries of the continent at three periods is shown in the following tables.

Perhaps the most striking facts revealed by these two tables are these; first, that the United Kingdom is the only great wheat-growing country which has shown a great decline in the amount of production in two successive periods; and, second, that both Germany and Russia show a great advance under both wheat and rye between the last two periods. This gives interest to statistics of acreage under these two crops, and some data under that head are given in the adjoining tables.

These figures show that the increased production is only in part, in some cases in small part, attributable to increase in area, and the following figures giving the average annual yield of wheat per acre (a) in the period preceding 1885, and (b) generally in the period of five years preceding 1905, shows that an improvement in yield in recent years has been very general.

When the Aryan peoples began their immigration into Europe a large part of the surface must have been covered with primeval forest; for even after long centuries of human occupation the Roman conquerors found vast regions where the axe had made no lasting impression. The account given by Julius

Caesar of the Silva Hercynia is well known: it extended, he tells us, for sixty days’ journey from Helvetia eastward, and it probably included what are now called the Schwarzwald, the Odenwald, the Spessart, the Rhön, the Thüringerwald, the Harz, the Fichtelgebirge, the Erzgebirge and the Riesengebirge. Since then the progress of population has subjected many thousands of square miles to the plough, and in some parts of the continent it is only where the ground is too sterile or too steep that the trees have been allowed to retain possession. Several countries, where the destruction has been most reckless, have been obliged to take systematic measures to control the exploitation and secure the replantation of exhausted areas. To this they have been constrained not only by lack of timber and fuel, but also by the prejudicial effects exerted on the climate and the irrigation of the country by the denudation of the high grounds. But even now, on the whole, Europe is well wooded, and two or three countries find an extensive source of wealth in the export of timber and other forest productions, such as turpentine, tar, charcoal, bark, bast and potash.

The following estimates of the forest areas of European countries are given in G.S. Boulger’s Wood:—

Horse-breeding is a highly important industry in almost all European countries, and in several, as Russia, France, Hungary and Spain, the state gives it exceptional support. Almost every district of the continent has a breed of its own: Russia reckons those of the Bashkirs, the Kalmucks, the

Don-Cossacks, the Esthonians and the Finlanders as among its best; France sets store by those of Flanders, Picardy, Normandy, Limousin