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AGRICULTURE OF NORTHERN ILLINOIS. 



The Grove, Northfield, Cook Co., Illinois, 



December 25th, 1851. 



Dear Sir — Your favor of recent date lias been received, and I would gladly 

 comply with your very flattering request, did I, at this moment, feel able to do 

 anything like justice to either of the interesting subjects so kindly suggested. 



But the time allowed is very short; and I have been suffering from an affec- 

 tion of the eyes which still prevents reading, and renders writing somewhat 

 difficult and painful. And, you are doubtless aware, that one, who does not 

 write for the press habitually, as a business, can seldom, if ever, produce a good 

 article " upon compulsion." And yet, should this reply to your kind letter chance 

 to grow into an Essay under my ever-willing pen, you will be at liberty to use 

 it, should you find grains of wheat enough mixed with my Avordy chaff, to make 

 the whole worth preservation. 



You suggest, as one subject upon which you wish me to write, " The Agri- 

 cultural Condition of Northern Illinois." Now, Sir, there are so many 

 new and favorable elements affecting us just at the pi'esent moment, that it is 

 not easy to give any thing like a clear idea of the agricultural condition of this 

 region, without a more lengthened history of cause and effect, than I am able to 

 put into readable form in a single day. 



I think I may safely assert, however, that husbandry, in Northern Illinois, is 

 now in a state of active transition, from the old hundred-acre wheat fields, to 

 moderate stock and dairy farms, and a variety of products for market instead of 

 the one, which seventeen years experience has shown to be the most uncertain, 

 and — except occasionally (and ihoi from accidental causes) — the least profitable 

 of all standard crops in Northern Illinois. 



Say what we may, with our present mode of cultivation, this is not a wheat 

 country — though I am by no means prepared to say, that it may not be made 

 one in the next generation; but it is hardly probable that we shall ever be able 

 to compete with the southern part of our own State — much less such wheat 

 States as Michigan and Ohio — in a Southern or Eastern market. Not, at least, 

 with our present knowledge of soils and cultivation. Meteorological influences, 

 facilities for transportation, and other causes, aftectinsr the wheat crop in Northern 

 Illinois, and, I may well add. Southern Wisconsin. 



Our soil is mostly a peculiar Prairie Formation, differing materially in sen- 

 sible properties, and considerably in chemical composition from any good " wheat 



