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growth, hasten maturity, and resist or anticipate insect attacks. With red 
wheat at $1 50 in the bin, will it not pay to run a system of horse-hoes over 
level prairies, at the rate of several acres per day? Will not a saving of forty 
per cent. of the seed, by wide drilling to facilitate hoeing, pay a large portion 
of the expense? A half bushel per acre of seed saved, worth seventy-five cents 
toone dollar, with the right sort of an implement for cultivating, would pay every 
cent of the cost. 
Too much seed is used in wheat culture. Scarcely less than twenty millions 
of acres will suffice for the wheat area of the United States, requiring nearly 
thirty millions of bushels of seed, and little more than ten bushels per acre are 
produced. Ten millions of bushels of this seed, worth perhaps sixteer mil- 
lions of dollars, might besaved to the country, sold for bread, and the proceeds ap- 
plied to the cultivation of growing wheat, with a fair probability of obtaining by 
such means more than twenty additional millions of bushels for the bread of the 
nation. So large a portion of this seed is now wasted by sowing at irregular 
intervals and at unequal depths, and so much is choked by weeds, that farmers 
say they cannot use a less quantity; but with universal drilling, at a width 
sufficient to allow the tillering and growth which would result from hoeing or 
cultivating, two-thirds of the present supply would be more than ample. 
Is not a severe reflection upon the judgment and skill of wheat-growers fur- 
nished by the fact that ninety-nine of a hundred of them “run out’ their seed 
in a few years, and depend upon the special culture and superior judgment of 
the remaining one to furnish them with improved seed at $4 or $5 per bushel ? 
About one bushel in every seven produced in the United States is saved for 
seed, when the requirement should be no more than one for every twenty. 
Thus millions of bushels are wasted, buried in the earth with no prospect of 
resurrection, and sacrificed to ignorance and thriftlessness. It is taking the 
children’s bread, without the poor satisfaction of having fed a dog with it. 
Such waste may be avoided. Thin seeding is impracticable with poor culture, 
though the result varies little whether it is thick or thin; it is not only practica- 
ble, but necessary, in connection with deep ploughing, thorough tillage, and 
hoeing for the purpose of killing weeds, admitting air, and retaining moisture 
about the roots of the plant. 
Abundant evidence of the value of horse-hoeing can be furnished, not only 
from Europe, where no progressive farmer thinks of omitting it, but in this 
country. A correspondent of this Department, in North Carolina, last year 
drilled one pound nine ounces of Tappahannock wheat, at intervals of eighteen 
inches, and cultivated between the drills ; the result was 186 pounds of wheat, 
or about one hundred and twenty to one, instead of seven to one, our average 
product of late. R. A. Gilpin, of West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 1866, 
drilled one acre, at intervals of twenty inches, and the remainder of the field 
at ten inches, and obtained nine bushels per acre from the narrow drilling 
without hoeing, and twenty-three bushels from the wide drilling with once 
cultivating with a one-horse hoe-harrow. Thus a single hoeing produced 
fourteen bushels of wheat, worth $30, besides saving one-half of the seed in 
drilling. ~ A fact in cotton growing, just received, illustrates the value of 
thorough cultivation, whether applied to wheat or cotton production: Four 
bales of cotton were last year grown upon a single acre, by the use of the spade 
and hoe alone. Our farmers may freely acknowledge the advantage of culti- 
vating wheat, but still insist that it will not pay, and continue to incur the loss 
of rah to two-thirds of their crop and all of their profits as the penalty of 
neglect. 
When Ohio, as in 1866, gathered but three bushels of seed for every bushel 
sown, the French inquiry is suggested again: “ What advantage can be gained 
from sowing three hectolitres of seed in order to gain six or ten!’’ and “ Would 
it not be better to bestow upon one hectare the manure and labor we should have 
