THE DECADENCE OF BRITISH AGRICULTURE.
By T.
IN the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Prof. John F. Crowell gives some solicitous and uneasy views of the present condition of agriculture in England. He notes the speedy transfer of the people from the country to the cities, and says that this is producing a rapid decline in the values of rural property. He thinks that not only is the social constitution being reconstructed, but that there is a rapid drying up of one of the nation's main sources of public revenue, and also the income to many of the nation's most cherished institutions. What a great mistake men make when they desert the farm! The tenantry system of England is no doubt responsible for much of the decline in agriculture; but that evil does not exist in this country. Hundreds of families who are now crowded into the cities and hardly able to get the bread with which to sustain life, might be making good livings on small farms of from five to twenty acres. There is no work that is more completely adapted to man than agriculture. But many men have failed to appreciate this, and hence refuse to adapt themselves to the very thing that their Creator has already adapted to them. We can not hope to see a general turning away from the cities to the farm. But we hope that some at least will be induced to consider the advantages of it, and try the benefits of agriculture and a country home. T.