Nothing is more difficult than to determine the value of land in a country in the course of formation, like the Argentine Republic, in which it undergoes considerable increase from one moment to another; not only on account of general progress, but also from special reasons, such as good harvests, the construction of a railroad, etc. In the same region, in the same district, two neighbouring tracts will often have a different value, accordingly as they have or have not a permanent water-supply, or as they are more or less adapted to agriculture, nearer to or further from a railway, a station, or a centre of population. For some years now, two new factors of valuation have come into being: the culture of lucerne and the planting of quebracho wood. Since farmers have known of the enormous——the fabulous——profits to be derived from fields of lucerne, every buyer of land inquires first of all if there is water available; that is, if the subterranean water-level is near the surface; as on that factor depends the existence of the lucerne pasture for many years. If upon investigation it is found that there is water the land, by this sole fact, acquires an enormous value in comparison to what it would be worth if it were unfit for lucerne. An important newspaper, published in Buenos Ayres in the English tongue, the _Standard_, has shewn that the price of land in Victoria (Australia), where the acre is worth from £4, 6s. to £9, compared to the prices paid for land in the Argentine suitable for sowing lucerne (that is, in the south of Córdoba and San Luis, where there are no invasions of rabbits, where there is no drought, and which are half-way, so to speak, to the European markets) proves, by comparison, the low value of Argentine land. Even when near a railway, such lands may be bought for 17s. 6d. or £1 per acre. In proof of the above affirmation, the _Standard_ has made the following calculation: Let us suppose an expense of 6s. 5d, per acre for the expenses of sowing and cultivating an acre of soil (including sowing it with lucerne at £2 per cwt.), it follows that the acre costs from £1, 3s. to £1, 8s., and the square league of 6175 acres (representing the work of eighteen months) about £7920. Adding £880 for fencing and watering, we find the price of the square league (9.648 square miles) amounts to some £8800.