Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/792

770 at any given time, or the average of that area for any given period, must necessarily be the proportion always to be required for the cultivation of those articles, and that any calculations or predictions made on that assumption are liable to be completely upset by events unforeseen and unprovided for? Does it not seem probable that if Sir W. Crookes had examined Mr. Davis's figures more closely than apparently he did, he would have found that "average acre yields for long periods" are not "essential factors"; that "unit requirements for each of the primary food staples of the temperate zones" can not be so easily determined; that "the ratio existing during recent periods between the consuming element and acres employed in the production of each of such primary food staples" are not necessarily indicative of the ratio that will require to exist in the years to come; and that Mr. Davis's "scientific method" does not "enable him to ascertain the acreage requirements of the separate national populations and of the bread-eating world as a whole"?

In order to insure a famine in 1931 it was necessary for Sir W. Crookes to assume a given increase of population during the intervening period and no change in the existing conditions of wheat cultivation and consumption, and also to limit by hard-and-fast lines the sources of supply. It is to the manner in which Sir W. Crookes has limited and underestimated the wheat resources of Canada that we now propose to take exception; and it is difficult to understand how, with ample means of information available, he could have committed himself to the statements he has made. What does he say about Manitoba? "In the year 1897 there were 2,371,441 acres under cultivation in Manitoba, out of a total of 13,051,375 acres. The total area includes water courses, lakes, forests, towns and farms, land unsuitable for wheat growing, and land required for other crops." Now, the facts are that the total area of Manitoba is 73,956 square miles, and if from that area 9,890 square miles of water surface are deducted there remain 64,066 square miles, or 41,002,240 acres of land, so that even after making due allowance for forests, towns, etc., there are nearly three times the number of acres available than are given by Sir W. Crookes. Attempts have been made in vain to find out whence these figures were obtained, but there is apparently no clew; and while it is not to be supposed for a moment that the figures were purposely misstated, surely the important conclusions drawn from them deserved that some attempt at least should have been made to ascertain their accuracy. Sir W. Crookes claims to be indebted to the official publications of the Government of Canada, but it is certain that none of them ever contained the figures used by him.