[TO THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR:I
SIR,—In reference to your article on the above subject, there is evidently some great mistake as to the products which can be obtained from the land. It is stated that in England an acre will support about fifty to fifty-five men, while in Germany the land is made so productive by the superior means of cultivation that it will support seventy-five men. Assuming that wheat will support as great a number ars any other crop, and take the produce of the English land at thirty bushels-- which is a very high average—and assuming that the Germans, by superior cultivation, can produce say forty bushels, this would give for seventy-five men a total of slightly under one and a-half ounces per day per man. I do not think that even in war-time a German could subsist on this quantity of food. There is evidently a miscalculation or a clerical error in the statement made.—I am, Sir, dre.,
Prorren.
[There was, of course, a serious slip, which we much regret, in tran- scribing the figures from Mr. Middleton's interesting Report. The unit of comparison which he takes is not one acre but a hundred acres. German land, with inferior fertility and an inferior climate, supports seventy-five men per hundred acres, as compared with fifty to fifty-five men supported by every hundred acres of English land.—En. Spectator.]
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