since, we shipped many thousands of bags of vegetable seeds into America, and they had to arrive by a certain date to avoid extravagant duties. Why, only last week we executed an order for New Zealand, mostly clover seed, which filled twenty-five 400-gallon iron tanks, each tank holding about one and a half tons, and we are just filling nineteen hundred barrels with seeds for South Africa."

"Are these latter going into Rhodesia to re-sow that country?'

"Probably a good deal of it is for that purpose-but stay, you must not press me too closely on this point. Let us say they are going to an obscure part of South Africa.'

"What area would such a quantity of seeds plant as have been ordered from you by the Indian Government ? '

666

'Say roughly a hundred thousand acres.' "But is any nourishment obtained from common vegetables ?'

"You must not call our vegetables by such a name. We only handle highly selected strains, and each in its special class contains the greatest amount of nutritive properties. Take the carrot, for instance; the varieties we are sending will not only sustain life, but are positively fattening. You may not be aware that this crop furnishes one of the staple foods amongst the mass of the population throughout the South of France and Italy, and of all carrots the white and yellow are

the richest, and yet they are only given to stock in this country. Put a carrot before a Londoner, he would reject it as cattle food.""

In the Appendix will be found an illustration of one of the iron air-tight tanks in which Messrs. Carter send seed all over the world.

CHAPTER X.

HOW TO FORM AND MAINTAIN A RESERVE OF WHEAT EQUAL TO OUR ANNUAL IMPORT OF IT.

THIS chapter must be to some extent a recapitulation of matters dealt with all through this book.

If we, as a nation, decide to form a reserve equal to our annual import of wheat and flour, it is perfectly certain we should have to pay for

1. The original store.

2. The cost of maintaining it.

On page 36 I mentioned thirty millions sterling as the amount we might have to pay for our reserve-it might be less or more-but in any case it would be only an investment in a splendid security, and all we should actually have to pay would be the interest on that investment annually. Whether the money

for the original investment should be obtained by the issue of a special Government Stock bearing such interest as would attract that amount of capital, or the establishment of a Sinking Fund, is a question on which I need not speculate. That the money would be forthcoming there can be no doubt. If we take, as I suggest, five years to form the reserve, we should want five millions a year to pay for it.

A perfectly legitimate and possibly best way of paying for the reserve, would be, as I said in the Daily News a year ago, to apply some of the money now devoted to reducing the National Debt, to forming the Reserve of Food.

Russia, since 1891, has been seriously contemplating spending about twenty-five millions sterling on a naval military canal, connecting Riga on the Baltic with Kherson on the Black Sea, utilizing the rivers Duna and Dnieper for the greater part of the distance. It is estimated that it would take five years to complete this gigantic scheme.

Surely, if Russia can contemplate this great scheme of national defence, our empire need

not shrink from investing thirty millions in what will always be worth, as long as we continue to live on foreign wheat, far more than its original cost.

What we shall have to pay for then is only the expense of keeping and renewing our

reserve.

Having bought it, as I have suggested, by giving advance orders in the corn-producing countries at such a price, and under such conditions as will assure the producer a fair profit, and the certainty that what he produced would have to be in addition to the usual market demand, we gradually over a period of five years accumulate our reserve.

During these five years, and ever afterwards, the Government should, I suggest, have the power to keep it good by exchanging it for the current import of wheat.

By having the power I mean that it should, at its discretion, be able to either take from an importer a shipment of wheat, or pass it on to him.

As I shall presently show, the editor of the Miller considers this part of my proposal the most difficult to carry out, but I think