------------------+---------------------------- | Wheat Area (in kilometres). |------------+--------------- | 1895 | 1908 ------------------+------------+--------------- Alsina | 45 | 1,296 Puan | 52 | 1,321 Suarez | 104 | 978 La Madrid | 75 | 249 Pringles | 13 | 724 Darrego | -- | 885 Terr. de la Pampa | -- | 1,731 ------------------+------------+---------------- [Illustration: MAP IV.--DENSITY OF THE MAIZE CROP. _As it needs more heat and moisture than wheat, the maize does not go so far to the west and south. It is concentrated for export at the ports of the Rio de la Plata and the Parana, especially at Rosario. The Argentine "corn belt," the chief maize area, extends back of Rosario and San Nicolas to beyond Casilda and Pergamino._ To face p. 198.] Wheat first spread along the line from Buenos Aires to Bahia Blanca, west of the Sierra de la Ventana, then in the coastal district, east of Bahia Blanca. These two wheat-areas became connected after 1904, when the opening of the direct line from Olavarria to Buenos Aires facilitated the development of the intermediate region (Pringles-Laprida). From Bahia Blanca it spread to the west and north-west along the Toay line, and southward as far as Colorado on the coast. In the whole area of the Central Pampa it is still possible to distinguish two strata of immigrants, of different dates, one superimposed upon the other: the sheep-breeders and the farmers. Round Toay the contrast between the two elements of the population is even more striking, because the first pastoral colonization, which dates from 1890, was to a great extent the work of creole _puntanos_ (from the San Luis province). The actual agricultural colonies, on the other hand, include recent European immigrants and colonists from other parts of the provinces of Buenos Aires and Entre Rios. The yield of the wheat grows less and less as one goes westward. The harvest may be injured either by late frost or drought, or, especially, by hot winds which scorch the plants and blight the half-realized hopes of the farmers in the weeks just before the harvest. But the relative poorness of the return is compensated by the extent of the farms and the cheapness of labour. The harvest is often done with machines that peel and pack the wheat, and the workers are not compelled, as they are at Santa Fe, to wait for the threshing machine. The aridity does not permit flax-growing, but oats can be grown, especially between the Sierra de la Ventana and the Sierra de Tandil; and it is good to sow oats when the land has been impoverished by consecutive crops of wheat. Exports of oats through Bahia Blanca began in 1906.