From the foregoing data we may conclude that the countries capable of exporting wheat are far from numerous, and that the area sown with cereals throughout the world is comparatively small. Hitherto wheat has been grown on an extensive scale in the United States, Russia, and India; the agriculturalist demands everything of the soil and gives it nothing, so that the alternative will soon arise of losing the harvest, or of restoring fertility to exhausted soils, by means of costly manures which will absorb enormous sums. Then the legend of new countries will have had its day. To resume: there exists an enormous discrepancy between the needs of the consumer and the production of wheat; and the Argentine Republic, thanks to a concatenation of favourable economic and physical circumstances, is certainly in the best position in a great measure to supply this deficiency. But to obtain the desired result it is indispensable that she should still increase her population, and that the colonist should find upon the hospitable Argentine soil not only the guarantees of liberty and justice, but conditions propitious to his evolution as a land-owner. CHAPTER III STOCK-RAISING The transformation of the; old “estancia”——The principal stock-raising establishments: description, extent, number of heads of cattle and favorite breeds——The great “estancias” of the South and Patagonia. Approximate area of the soil devoted to cattle and sheep; general estimate of the numbers of cattle and sheep——Results of the census of 1908——The capital represented by Argentine stock-raising. Having spoken of agriculture and its future, we must mention another industry, which is the second source of national wealth——the pastoral industry. As a result of the rapid rise in the value of land, and the multiplication and selection of animals, the old form of Argentine stock-raising is undergoing, at the present time, a profound modification throughout the country. The traditional ranch or _estancia_, on which the animals browsed at will on vast prairies enclosed by wire fences, exposed to all the variations of the weather and all the vicissitudes of the temperature, feeding only on the grass of their pastures. This old type of estancia is gradually disappearing; is undergoing a transformation into carefully-managed farms, on which artificial prairies are constructed; farms with lucerne fields of 12,000, 25,000 or 50,000 acres, surfaces difficult for a European to conceive.[53] [Footnote 53: A field of 12,000 acres would be, for instance, 4 miles wide and over 4-1/2 miles long; one of 25,000 acres, 6 miles wide and 6-1/2 miles long; one of 50,000 acres, 7 miles wide and 11 miles long.——[TRANS.]]