1857.] The Agricultural Department of our Government. 5 



tobacco, and the less important vegetables, in untold quantities. 

 What a picture is here presented of our national prosperity ! of our 

 national thrift. And many are ready to say this is doing well enough 

 — such an interest needs no protection. But by looking at another 

 class of statistics, our minds will undergo a change, for by the sta- 

 tistics furnished by the Commissioner of Patents, we find that in 

 the great State of New York, while the number of acres of land in 

 cultivation has vastly increased, the agricultural product has de- 

 creased. According to these statistics we find there were in the 

 State of New York, in 1845, five hundred and five thousand horses, 

 and in 1850 but four hundred and forty-seven thousand and fourteen, 

 being a decrease, in five years, of fifty-eight thousand one hundred 

 and forty-one ; the decrease of the number of cows for the same pe- 

 riod, was sixty-eight thousand and sixty-six ; of other cattle, one 

 hundred and twenty-seven thousand, five hundred and twenty-five; 

 of swine, . five hundred and sixty-six thousand and ninety-two ; of 

 sheep, two millions, nine hundred and ninety thousand, six hun- 

 dred and twenty-four — nearly half — and but a slight increase in the 

 great staples of grain, and other agricultural products. 



In speaking of Virginia, Professor Leibigsays: "Harvests of 

 wheat and tobacco were obtained for a century, from one and the 

 same field without the aid of manure ; but now whole districts are 

 converted into pasture, which without manure produces neither wheat 

 nor tobacco. From every acre of this land there were removed, in 

 the space of one hundred years, twelve Timidred pounds of alkalies, 

 in leaves, grain and straw." This same system of farming, which 

 has exhausted the fertility of Virginia, has done its fatal work in 

 all the New England States. The soil in these States is now utterly 

 incapable of producing wheat as a remunerative crop. In 1850, by 

 the Census report, the State of Connecticut produced but forty-one 

 thousand, seven hundred and sixty-two bushels of wheat, while in 

 1840 it produced eighty-seven thousand bushels. Massachusetts, 

 but thirty-one thousand, two hundred and eleven ; in 1840, one hun- 

 dred and fifty-seven thousand, nine hundred and twenty-three bush- 

 els. And the whole state of Rhode Island, once famed for her fer- 

 tility, produced but three thousand and ninety-eight bushels; in 

 1840, twenty-six thousand, four hundred and nine. In speaking of 

 this vast depletion of the soil, it is declared in an official report 

 made to Congress, that one thousand million of dollars would not 

 more than restore to their original fertility the one hundred million 



