DIGEST OF STATE KEPOKTS. 499 



This amount was larger than the Government donation, and more than 

 half the entire fund of the institution. Out of the Franklin County 

 donation the experimental farm had been purchased and paid for. While 

 the enterprise is now regarded as established upon a permanent footing ; 

 still, to place it in an entirely unembarrassed condition, the State is 

 called upon to lend it further aid. Additional help would seem to be 

 necessary in order to finish the college buildings and to make the other 

 improvements contemplated by the trustees. 



Professor Edward Orton, of Antioch College, and Messrs. G. S. lunis, 

 S. D. Harris, D. C. Eichmond, and Dr. J. A. Warder delivered able ad- 

 dresses on agricultural topics during the progress of the convention. 

 The address of the last-named gentleman was on the subject of the de- 

 terioration of soils, and how to retain their fertility. He referred to 

 China and some of the European countries to show that their system of 

 rotation of crops and judicious fertilizing and manuring of soils was the 

 only proper and profitable system of agriculture. China, with a soil 

 originally poor and unproductive, and with no stock to produce manure 

 to enrich it, has been made wonderfully prolific by the untiring industry 

 of its people, and for many centuries past has been able to support its 

 immense population of over -1:00,000,000 of peoplefrom its own resources. 

 Of European countries Belgium is the best cultivated. Notwithstand- 

 ing the land has been constantly tilled for over a thousand years, the 

 fertility of the soil is such as to produce 50 bushels of wheat per acre, 

 with other CTO'ps in proportion. England is another illustration of the 

 advantages derived from a careful, painstaking, scientific system of farm- 

 ing. Less than one hundred years ago wheat averaged only 10 bushels 

 per acre in England. By a proper rotation of crops, by drainage, and 

 a liberal use of manure, the average yield has been brought up to 36 

 bushels per acre, in some sections as high as 50 and 60 bushels often 

 being grown. Southern Europe, the once fertile plains of Lombardy, 

 presents a good illustration of the opposite system. By cutting off the 

 forests, and continual cropping, the land now scarcely yields any return. 

 Much of this beautiful and originally fertile laud is now almost a barren 

 waste, and that which is tilled scarcely paj s the expense of cultivation. 

 Of the ruinous system of farming in the United States Mr. Eichmond 

 said : 



The effects of a bad system of farmiug can be seen all over the United States. The 

 cotton system of the South is the worst. A very few years with this crop wears out 

 the upland. Twelve years' continual cultivation of wheat in the rich, now lands of 

 Wisconsin will reduce the yield to 10 or 12 bushels per acre. 



The great State of Ohio has, in some past years, had to import wheat for her own 

 consumption. Many counties now produce little wheat. I have good authority for 

 stating that in the Miami Valley lands which formerly produced 80 bushels of corn now 

 grow only 40 bushels per acre. 



The New England States grow only one-sixtieth the grain they consume, and the 

 great State of New York grows less grain than she consumes. Ohio corn is retailing 

 in Connecticut at $1 per bushel this winter. » * * The soil of some of the New 

 England States had become so exhausted that but little wheat coukl be grown before 

 my remembrance. Corn, rye, and oats were cultivated to a limited extent. In Massa- 

 chusetts and Ehode Island, which were first settled, the wheat-crop first failed, then 

 the corn and o.-Jts, so that they ceased to become paying crops about 1820. The inhab- 

 itants then turned their attention to commerce and manmactures, drawing their supplies 

 of corn and rye principally from Western Connecticut. When I was a boy there was 

 a large grain trade carried on with Boston and Providence from this section. The land 

 was, during this period, cropped to its utmost extent, and soon exhausted, and the 

 inhabitants of Connecticut, like those of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, turned their 

 attention to commerce and manufactures. Upon the opening of the Erie Canal, in 

 182.'), wheat and other grain was brought in, and sold very cheap, from the then rich 

 lands of Western New York. At this period scarcely any grain crops paid the expenses 

 of cultivation, and very little was grown in the New England States, owiug to the 

 exhaustion of the land. * * * Our Eastern States are now doing what England 



