324 BOAED OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



boat, and word was passed about among fhe farmers as to how 

 many days a given boat would lie at a certain place to receive its 

 cargo of wheat. The last canal-boat I saw loaded was in Buffalo, 

 last year. The wheat was taken from the hold of a lake steamer, 

 weighed, and transferred to the canal-boat. The captain was 

 swearing because of delays. It would take three hours, he said, 

 to load his 8,000 bushels at that rate, and it ought, he thought, to 

 be done in less than half that time. 



Now, what are the obvious results of all this ? "Why a com- 

 plete revolution in the distribution of agricultural products. For- 

 merly, bad years made high prices, now the grain flows this way 

 or that for great distances under the slightest pressure of prices, 

 and thus prices are equalized ; a bad year in England does not 

 mean that English farmers will get much higher prices for their 

 crops, it means that more wheat will come from the great Missis- 

 sippi basin, or from California, or Oregon, or Australia. 



And so it affects us also. But I promised that I would tell 

 something about how grain was grown in those great grain grow- 

 ing regions of which we hear so much. 



The great grain region par excellence, has Illinois as a center. 

 A circle 800 miles in diameter, with Peoria in its center, includes 

 the region of greatest production, although some localities of great 

 celebrity for wheat lie outside of that. In Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, 

 and the states in cultivation in that circle. I need not dilate 

 on the methods of culture. They only differ from ours in such 

 ways as larger farms, more level and easily tilled lands, and no 

 manuring would indicate. I will merely note a few cases where 

 the culture of wheat is more specialized, and where the scale on 

 which cultivation is carried on has brought certain regions more 

 prominently into notice. 



And first, the Red River Region of Dakota, the famous Dal- 

 rymple farms so often described. Here, at the time of my visit 

 last year, 75,000 acres of new land were owned by a few farmers, 

 and all was under the management of Mr. Dalrymple. Wheat 

 growing had begun there five years before, and 25,000 acres were 

 in crop. This was divided into "farms" of about 6,000 acres, 

 with a "superintendent" over each. These farms are again 

 subdivided into "sections" of 2,000 acres cropped land, each 

 having its own farm buildings. The land is level as the sea, 

 the soil without stones, a deep, black sandy loam, the sand very 

 fine. There is no system of farming practised thus far, practically 



