Ploughing is done in autumn and the ground is further prepared during the following February; the furrows are then made; shortly afterward the cane is planted, covered with earth and the water is turned in. Irrigation is kept up until the end of October, when it is discontinued for two or three weeks to allow the cane to ripen. Harvesting begins in December and lasts until April. The cane when cut is transported by camels to the railway and thence to the mill. The customary procedure is to raise one crop of plant cane, one crop of ratoons and one crop of cotton or beans in succession, allowing the land to lie fallow the fourth year, and so on every four years. The yield of cane per acre depends upon the soil, the adequacy of the water supply and the temperature ruling during the period of growth; the average from plant cane is twenty-four tons and from ratoons sixteen tons. The factories depend upon cane furnished by the growers, either large plantation owners or small farmers who cultivate a few acres of rented land, and one of the serious problems which they have to face is the difficulty of obtaining an adequate supply. The capacity of the factories is large, the machinery is modern and they could easily take care of a much larger cane tonnage than they have been able to secure. An improvement is looked for as a result of more liberal terms recently offered to growers. The bulk of the output is raw centrifugal sugar, famous under the name of “Egyptian crystals,” and much sought after for flavoring chewing tobacco. The vineyardists of the Champagne district in France get from Egypt the sugar used in making their sparkling wines, as they hold that cane sugar is the only kind that will not hurt the flavor of the champagne. According to Willett & Gray the yearly crops in long tons since 1903 were: 1903-04 60,000 1904-05 60,000 1905-06 65,000 1906-07 42,195 1907-08 55,648 1908-09 34,835 1909-10 52,525 1910-11 49,394 1911-12 57,879 1912-13 75,420 1913-14 69,368 1914-15 75,738 1915-16 110,000[91] SPAIN Spain lies in the extreme southwest of Europe and it embraces about eleven-thirteenths of the Iberian peninsula. Its total area is 194,700 square miles, and in 1914 the population numbered 19,712,585.