to Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Egypt. It has been planted experimentally in recent years in many of the islands. Some opium is grown in Macedonia.

Cotton is grown principally near Levadeia in Boeotia. In Macedonia it used to be more grown than it is now, as the fall in its price led many peasants to abandon its cultivation for tobacco planting.

There are said to be great possibilities for the extraction of Essential Oils from both wild and cultivated plants. The oil at present most produced is oil of turpentine, of which 2,500,000 kg. are made yearly. The aniseed industry is also successful; some 500,000 or 600,000 okes 1 being produced from the cultivated variety. Live-stock.-The animal wealth of Old Greece is estimated at:

Throughout Greece there are mountain areas where sheep and goats flourish, which might carry larger flocks and herds than they do. Cattle are used mainly for draught purposes and yield little milk. Horses are docile, hardy, and sure-footed. In south Macedonia there are a few buffaloes, and along the north shore of the Gulf of Corinth are some camels; they are bred at Lamia. Cattle-raising is carried on mostly in Thessaly; a large number of sheep, lambs, and calves are constantly shipped from Volo to the Piraeus.

(b) Methods of Agriculture

In many parts of Greece the methods and implements of agriculture are very primitive. There is little use of 1 1 oke = 23 lb.

manure or scientific rotation of crops, but much ingenuity is shown, especially in the islands, in terracing land for cultivation in the barren parts. In Thessaly the wooden ploughs used differ little from those of more than 2,000 years ago. But there has been recently an increasing demand for improved machinery. Agricultural stations have been established in various parts of the country for the better instruction of the people and have yielded satisfactory results.

Irrigation. Most of the rivers of Greece are dry during the summer, and much must be done, if sufficient use is to be made of irrigation. The Greek Government is engaging a British engineer for irrigation to undertake surveys of the districts where such work seems likely to be remunerative.

The drainage of Lake Copais in Boeotia, which has given a large fertile area for agriculture, will be followed by the drainage of the Struma and Vardar, valleys in Macedonia.

(c) Forestry

About 2,500,000 acres are covered by forests in Greece. Their annual production is worth about £600,000. The most productive forests stretch from the Pindus range to the Gulf of Corinth, and in southern Epeiros there are others well worth exploiting. Most of the forests are State property; they were handed over in 1911 to the Ministry of Agriculture, Commerce, and National Economy. A school of forestry at Vythine in the Peloponnese educates a large proportion of the inspectors, superintendents, and foresters, who look after the forests. The trees have been deliberately destroyed, first by the Turks when they left the liberated country, and since then by the shepherds, who start forest fires in order to acquire new pasturage. The trees especially used in afforestation are the Scotch fir and Austrian pine.

(d) Land Tenure

Peasant proprietorship is almost universal in the Peloponnese; elsewhere it is gradually replacing the métayer system, under which large estates are held, the cultivator paying as rent to the proprietor one-third or one-half of the gross produce. Holdings vary considerably in size; in many parts they are too small, in others, especially Thessaly, they are too large for the labour and capital available, and are consequently unremunerative. The Greek, as a rule, likes to farm his own land, and according to his own method.

(3) FISHERIES

The supply of fish near Greece is diminishing for various reasons, the chief of which are (1) the absence of any close season for fishing, (2) the adoption of improved methods of fishing, (3) the great increase of sailing trawlers, (4) the use of dynamite, which is frequent, though illegal. The Greeks are naturally fond of fish, eat it a great deal, and are ready to give a good price for it, but salt fish has to take the place of fresh fish because of their diminishing supplies. At Preveza there is an inexhaustible supply of shellfish in the shallows that adjoin the strait.

Of rivers and lakes the best for fish are the Peneios, the Lake of Yanina, the Lake of Kastoria, and the Lake of Okhrida, the last being especially famous for its salmon-trout.

There are several sponge fisheries off the coast of Greece. In the islands of the Dodekanese spongefishing is normally the main occupation of the inhabitants. The prohibition of sponge-fishing there by the Italians has driven many of the sponge-fishers into Greek islands.

(4) MINERALS

The development of mining in Greece dates from the Mining Law of 1861, from which year to 1882 the Government granted several hundred concessions. From 1882 to 1898 no further concessions were made, but from the latter year, when the Zaïmes ministry was in power, an ever-increasing number has been granted. The minerals of Greece consist of various iron ores (hematite, mica, loadstone, spar), manganese, chrome, zinc (calamine and blende), silver-lead, nickel, lignite, magnesite, emery, sulphur, and others. The figures for output and value of some of the more important minerals in 1912 were as follows:

Iron Ores are worked at Grammatikon (near Marathon), and in several of the islands (Siphnos, Seriphos). Not enough capital has been sunk in exploiting this metal. Manganese-iron is among the minerals worked at Lavrion. Silver-lead is the most important of the products of the mining district of Lavrion. The chief companies established there are (1) La Compagnie française des Mines de Laurium, constituted in 1875 with a capital of £520,000, and (2) the Greek Metallurgical Company with a capital of £1,180,000. These

1 See below, p. 131, for recent increase.

H

companies gain profit not only from the unexhausted mineral wealth of the region, but from the refuse of the ancient mines and smelting works of that locality. Zinc, besides being found at Lavrion, appears in the form of calamine or blende in Antiparos and elsewhere. Manganese is only found in small quantities in Greece, which cannot easily compete with Caucasia; the chief places for its production are Grammatikon and Melos. Nickel is chiefly found in Locris, where a new mining company has made large profits on a small capital. Chrome is found in several parts of Euboea, Boeotia, Locris, and above all Thessaly, which exports a great deal through Volo to Philadelphia and Belgium. Magnesite is of much greater importance. The best comes from Euboea, where it is worked by two companies: (1) the British Petrified Company (since 1897), in the mines belonging to the monastery of Galataki, near Limni, and (2) the Société des Travaux Publics Communaux, a Greek company, which works its own mines at Mantudi and at Limni. The British quarries are worked on the surface, the Greek quarries underground, as the surface vein has been exhausted. Other magnesite mines are in Khalkidike, at Thebes, and at Perakhori, near Corinth. Magnesite is exported to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Belgium, and the United States. It is used for making or lining metallurgical furnaces for the manufacture of Bessemer steel, and for various purposes by contractors.

The Emery of Naxos is one of the most important of Greek products; the very best quality is produced in Naxos, where it is worked by the inhabitants under Government supervision; stringent provisions secure that the standard shall be kept up to the highest level and none but the best be exported as such. The sale of Naxos emery is one of the sources of revenue for the International Finance Committee for the payment