812 [Assembly 



ordinary circumstances, and is accomplished as far as practicable 

 to advance spring work. This system is more uniformly appro- 

 priated to heavy and tenacious lands. The action of frosts and 

 the elements upon the exposed soil tends, it is supposed, to pul- 

 verize and disintegrate the earth, while the gases formed in the 

 decomposition of the inverted turf are evolved just at that period 

 in the growth of the )^oung plant, when their fertilizing influences 

 are the most required to promote a vigorous vegetation. Many 

 hesitate to pursue this mode on warm and light soils of sandy 

 or gravelly formation, from the impression that the exposure of 

 these soils to the elements will waste their fertility, and that the 

 fermentation from the decomposing sward, which is so beneficial, 

 occurs too early to aid the growing crop. The fresh plowing of 

 stubble land, immediately before sowing, is preferred, as promot- 

 ing a more rapid and vigorous growth of the crop, which antici- 

 pates and chokes the vegetation of noxious plants. 



MARKETS. 



The first agricultural products, derived from the labors of 

 the early pioneer, were required to meet the wants of the 

 succeeding settlers. The flouring mills at Vergennes, in Vermont, 

 afforded a mart for the scanty excesses from the harvest of the 

 colony on the Boquet. At a later epoch, when the wheat products 

 of the county had attained some magnitude, Troy, and subscqnent- 

 ly Whitehall, supplied a market for its trafic. It was transport- 

 ed to these places during the winter by trains of sleighs. At the 

 opening of the canal, the Champlain valley had lost much of its 

 freshness and fertility as a wheat-growing district. 



' Wheat, for a term of many years, had furnished to the settler the 

 only means of liquidating the store accounts created for the supplies 

 of his family. At times even this medium was refused, when desti- 

 tution and often suffering followed. The price of wheat to the 

 merchant in this tratic was usually seventy-live cents the bushel. 

 Corn was generally exhaustt d by the domestic consumption, al- 

 though it was occasionally exported into Canada in exchange for 

 salt. Corn was worth, at the commencement of the present cen- 

 tury, in some parts of the country, one shilling the bushel, or if 

 transported a distance of thirty milts to Platt^burgh, commanded 



