82 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



liausting kinds. "Wheat and similar grains are grown there 

 continuously, year after year, without any attention, except 

 digging in the seed, watering, and taking the crop off. We 

 find in Hungary and Southern Russia large tracts of country 

 where, every other year, or every third year, large wheat 

 crops are harvested. The land is cleared, the seed put in, and 

 after the crop is gathered the land is allowed to rest one or 

 two years, then another crop is put in, and so on. This pro- 

 cess has been going on for centuries. Black l::^a wheat is 

 famous all over the world. The export of wheat from those 

 southern districts is immense. Until our western country 

 came into bearing, that was the chief source of the wheat- 

 supply to continental Europe. 



We have in our Genesee region, in central New York, a 

 country where the soil is of remarkable natural fertility, and, 

 after the first few years of cultivation, the farmers fell into a 

 routine which enables them to take off wheat crops every 

 third year, right along, with great uniformity. The uniformity 

 is great, at least so far as it depends upon the feeding power 

 of the soil. Accidents, like the rust, the midge, or something 

 of that sort may come in and destroy their crops occasionally, 

 but tlie feeding power of those soils remains, as a certain 

 quantity, and will probably so continue for a great length of 

 time. 



The most interesting case which I can bring up in illustra- 

 tion of the natural strength of soil is furnished by the English 

 gentleman to whom I have referred, Mr. Lawes. In April, 

 1870, he wrote, in respect to a field on his estate, a paragraph 

 as follows : 



" The same heavy loam, of no extraordinary fertility, has 

 yielded an average annual produce, without any manure at 

 all, of 16 bushels of wheat for twenty-six years ; 20 bushels 

 of barley for eighteen years, and nearly 24 hundred weight 

 (long hundred weight) of hay for fourteen years." 



Mr. Lawes began, in 1844, to see what would be the effect 

 of putting a given plot of land into the same crop year after 

 year, with no manure whatever ; and the result is what I have 

 just stated. These averages which he gives are, with one or 



