with bread for ten days, and purchasing 7,518,000 bushels. Massachusetts, though having a larger area than Connecticut, raised only 34,000 bushels, which, ground to powder, was sufficient to give the inhabitants of the State bread enough for breakfast and dinner, but not enough for supper.

The people of this commonwealth purchase 20,300,000 bushels of wheat. Rhode Island raised 733 bushels of wheat in 1869, and purchased about 3,000,000 per annum. The six New England States together purchase in round numbers, from 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 bushels of wheat, and quite as much of the other grains, or in round numbers 100,000,000 bushels of grain.

The early farming of the Hudson and Mohawk valleys owed much to the Dutch element which preponderated in the population. Neat stone walls, clean fields, well built houses for families, and substantial barns for stock, were common before the Revolution. Wheat and all the cereal crops gave abundant returns; orchards throve, and flocks and herds multiplied, while the climate permitted the culture of more delicate fruits than that of New England. As cultivation progressed in a westerly direction, the growth of wheat became more and more profitable; this again received an immense stimulus from the opening of cheap water communication between the great lakes and the Atlantic. Genesee wheat and the flour of the Rochester mills, became a synonym for perfection of breadstuffs. The great Genesee valley, and countless less noted spots along the head waters of the Delaware and Susquehanna, poured a flood of plenty toward the sea-board.

Manufactures flourished, as also inland commerce; while the system of internal improvements consumed the labors of a vast army of foreign emigrants. The forests disappeared before the greedy locomotives, or were wasted by accidental fires. The averages of cereal crops perceptibly diminished. The weevil appeared, at first in isolated and limited districts, but ere long it became impossible to grow wheat with profit between Lake Ontario and the southern line. The southern counties resorted to dairying and stock farming; those nearest the metropolis, to market gardening to a considerable extent; until gradually all the benefits of a diversified industry were fully manifested. Cattle breeding has received a large share of attention. The memorable cattle sale at which the eighth

a

“ Duchess of Geneva" brought the sum of $30,000, shows the high estimate placed upon Short-horns.

The present condition of agriculture in the Empire State is most flattering. Her scientists have diffused so much information respecting the laws of forestry, that the State is moving with unanimity to preserve a large part of the Adirondack mountain region, the forest feeder of her noble rivers, from further devastation. The preservation of natural pasturage will follow.

Among other recent industries, fish culture and fur culture deserve attention; the one for its novelty, the other for its immense importance. Trout raising has been made as certain and profitable as that of chickens and turkeys. The fur bearing animals have retired before civilization to such an extent that their extermination has been looked upon as probable. In 1867, Mr. Rassigue, of Oneida County, New York, commenced the rearing of minks, which can be done anywhere, all that is needed being a constantly flowing spring, and a small plot of ground. They breed rapidly, are subject to no diseases, and are worth from five to eight dollars a head, when grown.

The development of the dairying interest in the United States would require a volume for its full explanation. Mr. X. A. Willard, to whom it owes so much, stated, little more than a year ago, that American dairying represents a capital of more than $1,000,000,000.

The cheese product in 1872 sold for $30,000,000, and the butter product for $200,000,000.

Nine years ago, the first cheese factory was established in Oswego county; now, there are fifty. In one town are five factories, which work the milk of 2,200 cows. One of them made over 200,000 pounds of cheese. The number of cows in the county has increased from 10,000 to 30,000, under the stimulus of coöperation and association; each cow representing in herself, including land for keeping, factories, implements, and fixtures for marketing, a capital of $300, making a total investment of $9,000,000 in the dairy agriculture of the county. The average product of cheese per cow does not exceed 350 pounds in a season. Many dairies make an average of fifty pounds of butter per cow, also. Two hundred pounds of butter per cow is considered a good yield for butter dairies. Mr. L. D. Arnold, before the New York Dairymen's Association, thus states his views upon the future of dairy husbandry:

CONSUMPTION OF BUTTER AND CHEESE.

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“At the present rate of increase of population in the United States, the year 1900 will find us with 100,000,000 of inhabitants. If we continue to consume cheese at no greater rate than at present, it will require two and a half times the quantity that we now consume; or 450,000,000 to supply the annual home consumption. The shipping demand must also increase. Nothing but a war with England can prevent it. The English are a cheese-eating people, and are now using twice as much per

head as we do. Nor is that rate of consumption likely to be abated. It is the readiest and cheapest way to supply the laboring man with animal food, as it contains twice as much nutrition, pound for pound, as meat; while more pounds of cheese than meat can be produced from a given quantity of feed. The population of England is increasing, while her cheeseproducing capacity is not. Germany supplies her with what we do not; and, as no other European country produces any quantity for export, the increasing wants of England must be supplied from the United States. If we continue to consume cheese at the present rate, and England also, the increase of population will require for the year 1900, not less than a billion pounds!” Then there is the butter interest, larger still. We export but

. little butter, but we consume three and a half times as much as we do of cheeso, varying from thirteen to seventeen pounds per head per annum. I have often heard dairymen predict a high reward for dairy products in the future, especially for cheese, because the demand was so rapidly exceeding the limited capacity of the dairy districts of the country. The State of New York is more exclusively devoted to dairying than any other State in the Union, but only a small portion of the State is accredited as being good dairy land.

Pennsylvania has so nearly the same natural advantages and manufacturing interests as the State of New York, that her agriculture has developed in a similar manner, though without as many vicissitudes.

The Keystone of the “Old Thirteen,' Pennsylvania has been the mother of the States upon her western boundary; she attracted the first, and has been the theatre of the most successful attempts at foreign colonization. The Friends, the Swedes, the Moravians, the Mennonites, and various other religious sects, havo assisted in giving a peculiar character to her institutions, while the superiority of her soil, and the industries growing out of her mineral wealth, have maintained the balance of power most certain to secure prosperity.

New Jersey is the market garden of two great thriving cities, and fruit and vegetable-growing has there attained the greatest perfection. A blackberry grower, in West New Jersey, with seventy-five acres in cultivation, realized therefrom a net profit of $14,000. The cranberry has proved one of the most profitable crops. Sixty acres, in bearing, have netted over $13,000. Cranberry lands have brought $1,000 per acre. The agriculture of New Jersey has been created by facilities of transportation; waste lands are being rapidly reclaimed, and her growth is steady and continuous. Sixty-six per cent. of all the land in New Jersey is improved in farms, whose average value per acre is $86 14; the largest of any State in the Union.

Delaware and Maryland deserve more extended notice than our brief limits will allow. They are fast coming to be the garden spots of America. The peach crop of these States is immense—the average net profit of the crop of 1871, was seventy-five cents per basket. A peach farmer of Middletown, Delaware, cleared $33,000 from four bundred acres. The “ Peach Blossom Farm,” in Kent County, Maryland, contained six hundred acres of trees just coming into bearing, and was sold in winter for $31,500. The same year the purchaser sold peaches enough from it to amount to $52,000. One canning establishment in Dover, Delaware, consumed in 1873, of peaches, 18,000 bushels; of pears, 2,000 bushels; of tomatoes, 480 tons; of strawberries, 30,000 quarts; of cherries, 30,000 pounds.

In all these States, the advancing condition of agriculture is largely due to the influence of education and the press. The most influential journals—and those not especially devoted to this subject-maintain an extensive correspondence, and give · considerable space to the treatment of matters of agricultural interest, at home and abroad.

INCREASE OF MAIZE CULTURE.

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CHAPTER VII.

FARMING IN THE WESTERN STATES.

" Consumption is the crown of production, and the wealth of a nation is only to bo estimated by what it consumes." --John Ruskin.

The World's GRANARY-RELATIVE VALUE OF CORN AND WHEAT-STOCK FARU

ING VS. WHEAT FARMING-IMPROVED IMPLEMENTS: TRIAL OF AMERICAN MACHINES-MISSOURI, TENNESSEE AND KENTUCKY--CALIFORNIA AND OREGONAGRICULTURE OF THE CATLOLIC MISSIONS- John GILROY AND HIS NEICHBORS-LARGE WHEAT FIELDS--ENORMOUS CROP OF 1872-MARKET FOR CALIFORNIA WHEAT-FARMERS NOT ENRICHED BY THIS STREAM OF WEALTI-TONXAGE: PRICES.-CALIFORNIA THE CENTER OF WINE AND Wool PRODUCTION.

PASSING the great lakes, the emigrant farmer found a country awaiting him, where Providence, in the abounding conditions of prosperity, to use the language of one of their number, had not only "smiled, but laughed outright." A sea of verdure richer and more luxuriant than the meadow lands of the Connecticut or Genesee, dotted here and there with park-like, natural plantations of oaks, indicated lands for the plow, and sites for the homestead. Priceless in prospective value, it came almost without price into the hands of the settler. A season's labor in breaking the strong sod of the prairie, made it ready for wheat, secured him against want, and in the possessory right to the soil. The winters were not more severe, though a little more open than those of the northern sea-board. The northern belt of States, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, soon poured a silver stream of wheat into the granaries of the world; Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri, also wheat growers to a considerable extent, contributed a golden stream of corn, the noblest product of the new world. Up to the year 1800, the export of American corn had only exceeded, by a trifling amount, two million bushels. This

crop is first set down in the census of 1840, at three hundred and seventy-seven million five hundred and thirty-one thousand eight hundred and seventy-five bushels; in 1850, it covered thirty-one million of acres, and yielded six hundred million bushels; in 1860, it amounted to eight hundred and thirty-eight million seren hundred and ninety-two thousand seven hundred and forty-two bushels, the export being worth ten million dollars,

The ease and certainty with which the farmer may provide