294 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



the great Northwest, Iowa, Minnesota, and the region lying beyond them, 

 still remains, to a large extent, unoccupied, there seems no reason to 

 apprehend that the growth of this important crop will not continue to 

 increase in the future as rapidly as it has in the past. 



The other smaller grains have never occgupied so prominent a position 

 in our agriculture, being grown more especially for home consumption, 

 but in the aggregate they constitute no mean item of our national agri- 

 cultural wealth. Thus our rye-crop, as returned in 1870, amounted to 

 nearly 17,000,000 bushels, our barley to nearly 30,000,000, our buck- 

 wheat to nearly 10,000,000, and our oats to over 282,000,000. Eice, 

 which in 18G0 was reported at 187,107,032 pounds, had fallen off in 

 1870 to 73,635,021 pounds. 



The potato is more universally cultivated than any other plant except, 

 perhaps, Indian corn. It is scarcely more than a hundred years since it 

 became universally recognized as an indispensible farm product. Dur- 

 ing the latter part of the last century, and the earlier part of the pres- 

 ent, its cultivation in new soils was so easy, and its yield so abundant, 

 that it became an important article of food. No account was taken of 

 it in the census, however, till 1840, when the yield was reported as 

 108,298,060 bushels. Since that time the liability to disease has become 

 so great that the production has not increased in the same ratio as many 

 other crops, though the amount, by the census of 1870, including over 

 20,000,000 sweet potatoes, was 10'5,047,297 bushels. It has at times 

 formed no inconsiderable item of export, though by no means to be com- 

 pared in this respect with wheat and Indian corn. It is largely used in 

 the feeding of stock in some sections of the country. 



The culture of tobacco was undertaken by the settlers in Virginia 

 from the very outset of the colony. It is recorded that in 1615 the 

 gardens, fields, and streets of Jamestown were planted with tobacco. 

 It immediately became not only the great staple crop, but the principal 

 currency of the colony. By the year 1622 the product amounted to 

 60,000 pounds, and it more than doubled in the next twenty years. The 

 culture of this plant was introduced into the Dutch colony of New 

 York in 1646, though it never gained the prominence there that it did 

 farther south. But Maryland, the Carolinas, Georgia, Louisiana, and 

 later Kentucky, made it the leading object of their culture almost from 

 their first settlement. It long constituted the most valuable export of 

 British America; but the product per acre had been diminishing for 

 many years before the Eevolution, owing to the difficulty of supplying 

 manure, and the consequent exhaustion of the soil. But from 1744 to 

 1776 the exports of this cro]) averaged 40,000,000 pounds a year. 



Tobacco has now become a somewhat prominent crop in Massachu- 

 setts and Connecticut, and in both of these States its culture is rapidly 

 extending. In 1850, for instance, but 138,246 pounds were raised in 

 Massachusetts ; in 1860 the crop increased to 3,233,198 pounds, and in 

 1870 to 7,312,885, while the crop of 1872 is probably at least 25 per 

 cent, greater still. The aggregate yield of the country in 1840 was re- 

 ported by the census of that year as 219,163,319 pounds, Avhile in 1850 

 it was reduced to 199,752,655 pounds; but in 1860 it went up to 434,- 

 209,401 pounds, to fall again in 1870 to 262,735,021 pounds, a fluctuation 

 to be explained in part by the many casualties to which it is liable, as 

 damage by insects, hail, drought, frosts, &c. 



The cotton- crop of the country has grown up entirely within the last 

 hundred years. The first improvements in the process of spinning it in 

 England were not made till the invention of Arkwright, in 1769, and 

 the spinning-jenny of Hargreavesin 1770, and comparatively little cot- 



