DENMARK is principally an agricultural country. The most fertile parts are the islands of Laaland and Falster, and next to them Seeland and Fur= ; but agriculture is most skilfully carried on in the Baltic districts of Holstein. The Danes however are not gene rally good agriculturalists, Of the whole area, about two-thirds are appropriated to arable land; one-twelfth to pasture and meadow and one-twentieth to woods and forests. The average yearly produce is stated at about 8,000,000 quarters of corn ; 2,000,000 tons of potatoes ; and a proportionate quantity of other produce. Peas and pears, rapeseed, flax, hemp, and tobacco are grown: fruits and table vegetables are comparatively small in produce. The fine forests once possessed by Denmark have been allowed so to decay, that the inhabitants are obliged to import wood from other countries. The chief timber-trees are pine, beech, oak, and birch.
Denmark possesses no mines or metals whatever ; nor any minerals of importance, except coals, freestone, and salt. Amber is collected on the Hitze, a sandbank on the western coast of Jutland. Potters' and por celain earths are also obtained. Peat is got wherever there are swamps, and every village in those parts has bog lands assigned for its supply.
Manufactures era but slightly developed in Denmark. Altona produces silk, woollen, and cotton goods, leather, soap, refined sugar, and tobacco. Lace is made on a very extensive scale in and about Tondern. There are large tobacco manufactures, but they are said not to produce more than one-eighth of the quan thy consumed. The woollen and cotton manu factures are small in amount. There are a few establishments for linen, gloves, paper, and ironware. Straw hats, sail-cloth, glass, soap, leather, saltpetre, gunpowder, and arms, plated goods, china, and earthenware, beer and spirits, thread, refined sugar, soda, and pot ashes are among the productions of Danish industry. The brandy distilleries are rather numerous. The peasants' families make their own woollen clothing in genera], which is composed of a coarse stuff termed wadmel ; and indeed there are few articles of domestic use, whether utensils or for apparel, which are not made by their own hands.
There is probably no country in Europe better adapted or more favourably situated in many respects for commerce than Denmark. It is the key of the Baltic, and possesses peculiar advantages for a ready and cheap in tercourse with all the maritime nations of Europe. Copenhagen, the capital, is the cen tral point of the Danish foreign trade, which has been greatly favoured by the neutral policy which the government has endeavoured to pursue during the last hundred years and more. Navigation, in which about 50,000 hands are employed, is a great source of profit to the country, for the Danes navigate their vessels on cheaper terms than many of their competitors, and are excellent mariners, on which account they are the carriers for other countries, particularly to the Mediterranean and Levant. There is a brisk intercourse by sea between the several ports. The chief places of trade are Copenhagen, Altona, Koersoer, Helsingor, Odensee, Viborg, Ran ders, Flensberg, Schleswig, Aalborg, Rends burg, Tondern, Aarhus, Gluckstadt, Neustedt, and Itzehoe. Railways have been recently formed from Altona to Gluckstadt, Rendsburg, and Kiel.
Denmark exports grain, butter, cheese, brandy, salted and smoked meats, horned cat tle, horses, skins and hides, oil, eider-down, fish, tallow, bristles, &c., and imports wines, salt, silk, wool, cotton, timber, coals, colonial produce, brandy, spirits, glass, drugs, &c.
The British produce and manufactures ex ported to Denmark in 1846-7-8 were of the following valises :— 1816 X310,318 1847 .. 253,701 1818 .. 296,466 Of the articles thus exported, cotton, coals, and iron manufacture comprises the largest items.
The imports from Denmark into Great Britain in 1848, comprised, among other items, butter 8,056 cwts, corn about 1,000,000 qrs.,flax 0,000 cwts., flax and other seeds, 45,000 qrs., seal skins, 11,000, wool 1,500,000 cwts.
The Danish vessels which left British ports in 1810 amounted to 1708, and those which entered were 1885. These vessels are small, however, the average tonnage being under 80 tons.