No. 85.] 157 



be content with less than twenty 1 No ! I will raise the standard 

 higher. It must be doubled, and let no farmer stop until he comes 

 up to the average of forty. We cannot accomplish great things if 

 we do not attempt thom, and success is only to be won by effort. Be- 

 tween sixty-eight and sixty-nine bushels of wheat to the acre have 

 been raised in the town of Wheatlanil, Monroe county, in this State, 

 as stated by Gen. Harmon, of Monroe. Here is a proof that it may 

 be done, because it has been done in this Stale — and if in that portion 

 of it, why not in this? why not in Columbia, the adjoining county? 

 although it is true that one soil is better adapted 1o the growth of 

 wheat than another. But these counties were formerly considered 

 wheat counties, and if they were so once they may be made so again. 

 They only lost their character when they lost their fertility by our 

 exhausting mode of farming. Restore to the soil what you have ta- 

 ken ; give what a little labor will procure — a moiety of its decompo- 

 sed vegetable products — and you will soon retrieve its character and 

 fertility together. 



Wheat was originally a wild plant, the kernel much smaller than 

 it is now^j and we hear of it first in the East. But we know nothing 

 definite as to the era in which it first appeared, the country that pro- 

 duced it, nor at what time it was first used as the food of man. Its 

 growth is co-extensive with the world, and whether sown under the 

 tropics or in northern latitudes, it always matures, and furnishes the 

 same valuable and nutritive food. It will thrive in all climes, and 

 man can avil himself of it in all places. It is so well adapted to his 

 support, that bread made from it is justly termed " the siaffof life." A 

 plant that is so useful, both as an article of food, and a means cf com- 

 merce, surely ought to draw our most careful attention to its success- 

 ful cultivation. It is a hardy plant ; what it wants is a rich, clean 

 soil, well pulverized, and to be sown in season. Its component parts, 

 chemists tell us, are " carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, toge- 

 ther with silex, lime, potash, soda, magnesia, alumina, chlorine, sul- 

 phur, phosphorus and a trace of iron." But a more simple division 

 for the farmer would be to say that a kernel of wheat consists of its 

 skin or covering, and the interior of starch or gluten. Its nutritive 

 powers are proportionate to the quantity of its gluten, and different 

 kindsproduceit in different degrees. The State of New- York, in 1840, 

 produced between twelve and thirteen millions of bushels — the Uni- 

 ted States about eighty-five millions — and as far as statistics cany us, 

 it is thought that there are raised from six to eight hundred millions 

 in Europe alone. 



An article so much used, so much sought after, and so necessary to 

 our existence, deserves all the consideration we can give it, and much 

 more than it now receives. We have spoken of the plant generally 

 — we will now say something of its varieties. In England, where it 

 is carefully cultivated, they are divided into a large number, each with 

 its corresponding name, sometimes given to it from the appearance 

 and color of the berry, the head or the straw, or from the district in 

 which it is cultivated. All these to us are unimportant. Here we 

 have fewer varieties, and hence have fewer names. We have from a 



