Eighth Eeport of the State Entomologist. 259 



of the globe to be, hereafter, more and more largely fed? What- 

 ever, then, may militate against this interest is deeply to be 

 deplored. Not only must it, for our individual needs and for the 

 welfare of the nations, be sustained, but it must be enlarged. 

 Will this naturally follow, in continued progression, with the 

 increase of our population and the occupancy and tillage of the 

 extended tracts of uncultivated land in our Western States and 

 Territories? No; for vast arid regions are being already reached, 

 where productive crops can only follow costly systems of irriga- 

 tion; and not many years will elapse before the virgin soil of the 

 West will no longer respond with the prolificacy of its first 

 receptiveness. Nature, at the outset, prodigal of her wealth, 

 gives up her accumulated stores of centuries for the asking; but 

 they are not inexhaustible, and sooner or later her golden returns 

 will cease. 



It is evident to all, that in the Eastern United States this con- 

 dition even now prevails. The husbandman can no longer ticlde 

 the earth with his hoe or plow and have it smile into a bountiful 

 crop or harvest. Where, fifty years ago, forty bushels of wheat 

 could be grown from an acre, now, with even increased labor, but 

 twelve bushels can be taken. Grain can no longer be cultivated 

 with profit, and other crops are in the same category. 



Other causes, in addition to an exhausted fertility of the soil, 

 have concurred in the prostration of the agricultural interests 

 in our Eastern States, and to send up the cry so often heard, 

 "farming does not pay." Prominent among these causes is the 

 competition to wliich the eastern farmer is brought with the 

 immense production of the fertile West — its comparative low 

 cost of production and the low rates of transportation by which 

 it reaches and commands the markets which he formerly con- 

 trolled. The crops on which he hitherto relied, and the methods 

 of agriculture which he and his fathers before him had remunera- 

 tively followed, must be abandoned. There must be a change 

 of base — a new departure. Absolute necessity compels a move- 

 ment all along the line, and the successful farmer of the future 

 will be he who joins the advance, and strives to keep pace with 

 the foremost in the march. 



