185*7.] An Explanat'ion — Geology of Ohio. 257 



dustry, and both travel and freights will augment in accumulating 

 ratio. 



I can not close this communication without referring to another 

 point. The city of Connersville has a water power, derived from 

 the Whitewater river and from the canal, which is scarcely inferior 

 in extent to that of Hamilton. There are several manufactories 

 already in operation at Connersville, and the completion of the 

 Junction Railroad will impart a new impulse to manufacturing en- 

 terprise at that place, greatly to the profit of the road. Here, iu 

 closing this part of my article, allow me to add a remark or two : 



The capacity of fertile lands to sustain population is not well un- 

 derstood in our country. From the evidence given in 1843 before 

 the committee on allotments of land in the British Parliament, it 

 appears that 112 bushels of wheat had been obtained from an acre 

 of land dug with the spade ; that the average profit derived from 

 cottage allotments was at the rate of $100 an acre, and that one 

 man, on the eighth of an acre of very indifi"erent land, had grown 

 a crop worth $25. It is also in evidence that a Flemish farmer of 

 six acres of moderate land, obtains from two acres and a half as 

 much grain, potatoes, butter and milk as are required for the con- 

 sumption of himself, his, wife, and three children, and sells the pro- 

 duce of the remaining three acres and a half. At one time the 

 Roman allowed but seven acres for each citizen, upon which to 

 support a whole family. At present the average size of landed 

 estates in France is only twenty acres. 



It may be well to extend our remarks to the other branches or 

 connections of that great Main Trunk Road, the Cincinnati, Hamil- 

 ton & Dayton Railroad, which is ramifying its branches indefinitely 

 to the westward and northward, and forming connections eastward 

 of the greatest importance to its business operations. There is but 

 a shade of diff"erence in the agricultural character of the lands 

 through which all its connections pass, either northward or west- 

 ward. The Drift, or Upper Silurian Limestone, almost everywhere. 

 in these directions, occupies the surface, and affords a good basis 

 for productive soils. The eastern connections pass into formations 

 of a different character, of which we shall not speak at present. 



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