Soils of great fertility are found in the central and southern regions, and occupy vast areas in the Provinces of Buenos Ayres and Santa Fé, and in parts of Córdoba and Entre Rios. “There are areas which are apparently of poor fertility,” says M. Charles Girola, from whom we derive these data, “which yield magnificent crops, thanks to irrigation or a better distribution of the water supply; especially in the west and the south.”[16] [Footnote 16: _Investigación agricola en la República Argentina_, by Charles Girola, Agronomic Engineer, Head of the Agronomic Bureau in the Ministry of Agriculture. (1904).] But in the Argentine Republic experience has shown that there is scarcely any soil which is not capable of profitable use, either for agriculture or stock-raising. It is very frequently remarked that lands which for a long time had been regarded as poor and almost sterile, unfit for exploitation, are to-day converted into admirable natural or artificial prairies, feeding numerous herds of sheep or cattle; or have more often been cleared by the colonist, and are now yielding excellent crops. This wonderful transformation is chiefly due to the pasturing of flocks and herds, which break up and enrich the soil; also to the fertilising organic matter contained in the turf; and finally to the addition of innumerable dead insects, which are brought by the wind and form a deposit on the soil, which acts as a kind of natural manure. These favourable conditions of fertility are all united in the region known as the _Pampa_, which occupies the greater part of the temperate zone of the country. It consists of immense and virgin plains, which stretch to the horizon almost without landmarks or changes of level, and offer admirable opportunities both for agriculture and stock-raising. Nearly all those Argentine lands which to-day bring fabulous prices were referred to, at an earlier period, as “lands good for nothing.” For this reason a considerable premium should be put on the theoretical estimate, made _a priori_, of the areas suitable for advantageous cultivation, in proportion as human labour works its transformation. It is difficult to estimate, except in the most approximate manner, the cultivable area of the Argentine. It should be not less than half the total area, or, in round figures, 370 millions of acres. Of this estimate at least two-thirds represents land suitable for stock-raising, leaving available for the production of cereals about 122 millions of acres; of which, at the present time, only a fifth part is under cultivation. We may see, by this simple comparison between the future and the present, that agriculture has still a great future before it and a large margin of development.