256 INDIANA HISTORICAL COLLECTIONS 



in mind that that is the foundation stone of all commer- 

 cial and manufacturing prosperity. 



If your limits would permit, I would give you a long 

 chapter upon the subject of the pork business alone. 



Hog killing, and pork packing, and bacon smoking, is 

 carried on here to an extent almost surpassing belief. I 

 am sorry to say that all those engaged in it the last year 

 are likely to suffer great loss by the depression of prices. 

 And the farmer is destined to suffer this year, as the de- 

 pression will now affect the article in his hands. A gen- 

 tleman well acquainted and well informed in the business, 

 thinks that pork will not nett the farmer this fall more 

 than 1 1-2 or 2 cents a pound. I also visited the markets 

 here, as I look upon them as affording a pretty fair index 

 of the surrounding country. I need not have been told 

 that the country had suffered for want of rain — the vege- 

 table productions, particularly potatoes, showed that. 

 Peaches, which I have often seen sold in this market for 

 12 cents a bushel, are now few and far between at one- 

 fourth that sum a piece and as poor as they are dear at 

 that. Total destruction of the germ of this fruit took 

 place last winter, throughout the west. 



Apples are also very poor this season. Speaking of 

 fruits and vegetables, reminds me of a new enemy of 

 man which has made its appearance this summer in some 

 parts of Kentucky in great quantities. It is a black, or 

 in some, black with lead colored stripes, bug or fly, about 

 half or three-quarters of an inch long and said by those 

 acquainted to belong to the cantharides family, which is 

 very destructive upon potato tops and many other green 

 and tender plants. 



Last evening I was called upon by a well known friend 

 of agriculture, Mr. John J. Mahard, 1 with a most cordial 



1 John J. Mahard, Jr. Contributor to the Western Farmer and 

 Gardener and the Prairie Farmer. Chairman, Farmers' and Me- 

 chanics' Agricultural Society, Hamilton County, Ohio. For a de- 

 scription of his farm see Western Farmer and Gardener, 2:233-34 

 (July, 1841). He later moved to Illinois, living near Springfield. 

 Prairie Farmer, 4:254 (November, 1844). 



