MONTHLY REPORT. 
WASHINGTON, D. C., October 26, 1868. 
Sir: I herewith respectfully present for publication a statement of the con- 
dition of the crops for October, with tables of averages, and extracts from cor- 
respondence; with articles upon the following topics: The Spanish fever ; 
Indian agricultural exhibition ; evils of land monopoly ; rice and sugar crops in 
Louisiana; agricultural statistics in Great Britain; sales of sheep in England ; 
European hop crops; meteorology, &c. 
J. R. DODGE, Statistician. 
Hon. Horace Capron, 
Commissioner of Agriculture. 
CONDITION OF THE CROPS IN OCTOBER. 
Wueat.—The full promise of the early summer has not been realized in the 
wheat harvest. The increase of area over that of last year, in its effect upon 
the aggregate production, is nearly neutralized by a small diminution in.some 
of the principal wheat-growing States, in the yield per acre; so that the increase 
in the total quantity, as shown by our October returns, is scarcely more than 
three per cent., and that is obtained mainly from the Pacific coast. 
The progress of wheat culture westward is somewhat remarkable, and its 
history is not altogether unlike that of cotton, in its occupancy of new lands, 
and their desertion after a few years’ use, not indeed to grow up in sedge or 
forest, but to be laid down in grass or employed in a more varied range of pro- 
duction. Not only does it go with population westward, but its movement is 
in an accelerating ratio, yielding results in bushels to each inhabitant surprising 
to eastern farmers. Thus has the territory between the Mississippi river and 
the Pacific ocean, which in 1859 yielded about 25,000,000 of bushels, harvested 
about 65,000,000; while the country east of the Mississippi, with its accession 
of population and wide distribution of agricultural implements, has made no 
increase, as a whole, a few of the western States barely making up the deficiency 
suffered in Virginia and Kentucky. It is a remarkable fact that a region which nine 
years ago produced only one-seventh of the wheat in the country, now supplies 
nearly one-third of it. A similar progress in another decade will carry the centre 
of wheat production beyond the Mississippi, and were it possible for the Pacific 
coast again to quadruple its yield, that distant wheat field will give a larger 
product than the aggregate production of the United States in 1850. Well may 
the East imagine the supply of breadstuffs decreasing, and naturally enough the 
West may deem their harvests golden; but when twenty more years shall pass 
and the virgin soils of California shall be despoiled of their fatness, and their 
yield shall be reduced to ten or twelve bushels per acre, where will the spoiler 
go for new wheat fields to ruin ? 
The averages for October appear to show a decrease in production in Maine, 
New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Texas, the latter having only half a 
crop. The other States indicate an increase, in most of those east of the Mis- 
