UNCLE SAM'S FARMS.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2489, 23 June 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

UNCLE SAM'S FARMS.

Uncle Sam's farms comprise an area nearly equal to one-fourth of Europe, and larger than the four greatest European countries put together (Russia excepted)—namely, France, Germany, Austria and Hungary, and Spain. The capital invested in agriculture would suffice to buy up the whole of Italy, with its rich olive groves and vineyards, its old historic cities, cathedrals, and palaces, its king and aristocracy, its pope and cardinals, and every other feudal appurtenance. Or, if the American

farmers were to sell out, they could bny the entire Peninsula of Spain, with all its traditions of mediaeval grandeur, and the flat lands which the Hollanders at

vast cost have wrested from the sea, and the quaint old towns they have built there. If he chose to put by his savings for three years, the Yankee

farmer could purchase the fee-simple of pretty Switzerland as a summer resort, and not touch his capital at all, for each year's earnings exceed 550,000,000i10l (£110,000,000). The cereal crop for 18S0 was more than two billio»sand a half of bushels. If placed in one mass this would make a pile three aud a half billion cubic feet. Built into one solid mass as high as the dome of St Paul's (threehundred aiul sixty-five feet), and as wide as the cathedral across the

iransepts (two hundred and eighty-five leet), it would extend a solid mass of

grain, down Fleet street and the length of the Strand to Piccadilly thence on through Kuightsbridgc, Hammersmith, and South Kensington, to a distance of over six miles. Or it would make a

pyramid three times as great as that of Cheops. If loaded on carts, it would require all the horses in Europe and a million more (thirty-three aud a half millions) to remove it, though each horse drew a load of two tons. Were the entire crop of cereals loaded on a con-

;inuous train of cars, the train would •each one aud a-lialf times round the

globe. Its value is half as great all the gold mined in California in the thirty-five years since gold was found there. Were the live stock upon CJncle Sam's estate ranged five abreast, each animal esti-

mated to occupy a space five feet long, aud inarched round the world, the head nid tail of the procession would overlaD This was the host of 1880 : that of 1888 would be over so much greater.— Andrew Ouniigie,