The Irish consume a greater proportion of vegetables than the English, even since the improvement by emigration after 1851; many of these live a beggarly life upon half an acre, and even less, and seldom taste animal food. The quantity of land under cultivation in Belgium is about fifteen-seventeenths of the whole, which gives an average of about two acres to each person, or the same as in England. In these two countries, the people consume more meat than in Ireland, and the amount of land occupied for pasturage is in nearly equal proportions in Belgium and England. In France, the average of cultivated land is 1-2/3 acre; in Holland, 1-4/5 acre to each person. ~AREA AND VALUE OF ARABLE LAND IN CHINA.~ If the same proportion between the arable and uncultivated land exists in China as in England, namely one-fourth, there are about six hundred and fifty millions of acres under cultivation in China; and we are not left altogether to conjecture, for by a report made to Kienlung in 1745, it appears that the area of the land under cultivation was 595,598,221 acres; a subsequent calculation places it at 640,579,381 acres, which is almost the same proportion as in England. Estimating it at six hundred and fifty millions--for it has since increased rather than diminished--it gives one acre and four-fifths to every person, which is by no means a small supply for the Chinese, considering that there are no cultivated pastures or meadows. In comparing the population of different countries, the manner of living and the articles of food in use, form such important elements of the calculation, in ascertaining whether the country be overstocked or not, that a mere tabular view of the number of persons on a square mile is an imperfect criterion of the amount of inhabitants the land would maintain if they consumed the same food, and lived in the same manner in all of them. Living as the Chinese, Hindus, Japanese, and other Asiatics do, chiefly upon vegetables, the country can hardly be said to maintain more than one-half or one-third as many people on a square mile as it might do, if their energies were developed to the same extent with those of the English or Belgians. The population of these eastern regions has been repressed by the combined influences of ignorance, insecurity of life and property, religious prejudices, vice, and wars, so that the land has never maintained as many inhabitants as one would have otherwise reasonably expected therefrom.