AGRICULTURE. 



1870, 73,635,001 pounds were raised in the 

 United States, and 43,123,939 pounds im- 

 ported. The returns of the crop of 1871 are 

 not yet published, hut there is good reason to 

 helieve that within a very few years we shall 

 not only grow our own rice (which is much 

 superior to the East-India grain), but be able 

 to export very largely. 



The Tobacco crop was largely over-estimated 

 in 1870, the actual production being only 250,- 

 628,000 pounds, instead of 310,000,000 pounds 

 as was predicted. The sections producing the 

 seed-leaf variety report an unusually large 

 crop, Missouri and California an average one, 

 while Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and 

 Kentucky, which usually produce somewhat 

 more than half of the entire crop, report an 

 average falling off of about eleven per cent, 

 from last year's production. The estimate of 

 240,000,000 pounds, for the entire crop, can- 

 not be far from the truth. 



Sugar from the sugar-cane was not very 

 successfully produced in 1871. A much larger 

 crop was planted, and 'there may be 145,000 

 hogsheads made, but this will probably be the 

 outside. Sorghum is not grown any thing like 

 as largely east of the Mississippi as it was a 

 few years ago, the sugar-cane, molasses, and 

 syrups, having taken the place of sorghum- 

 syrup, or reduced it to so low a price that its 

 production was not profitable ; but west of the 

 Mississippi, especially in Wisconsin, Minnesota, 

 Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, its cultivation is 

 largely on the increase. The syrup is so much 

 a domestic production with the farmers that, 

 like the maple-sugar, the amount produced in 

 any given year can only be determined by the 

 machinery of the census. 



The Beet-Sugar interest is again assuming a 

 considerable magnitude. After the failure of 

 the extensive and costly works at Chatsworth, 

 Illinois, owing to the presence of magnesian 

 salts in the soil and the water, it was thought 

 that the culture of the Silesian beet for sugar 

 here would never prove a success ; but it has 

 been undertaken, by Germans familiar with all 

 the processes, and the difficulties to be over- 

 come, in Freeport, Illinois, Black Hawk, Wis- 

 consin, and at Alvarado and Sacramento, Cali- 

 fornia. Though these establishments are all 

 in their infancy, they are all doing well ; about 

 three million pounds of sugar were made in 

 1871, and more than twice that quantity will 

 probably be produced in 1872. 



Flax is now largely raised, mainly for the 

 seed, in several of the Western States. The 

 amount grown in 1871 was a little more than 

 in 1870. 



Peas and Beans, generally profitable crops 

 on the light sandy loams of the Atlantic slope, 

 were not raised in as large quantities as usual 

 in 1871, the falling off from the production of 

 1870 being from six to eight per cent. Of 

 Fruits, Grapes were, taking the entire coun- 

 try through, more plentiful than usual. Of no 

 fruit is the acreage increasing so rapidly as 



this, and though in the Eastern and some of 

 the Middle States the yield, per vine, was much 

 less than usual, and the quality generally in- 

 ferior, yet the quantity thrown on the market 

 was enormous, and the wine production much 

 larger than ever before. 



Of other fruits the report is not so favorable. 

 It was decidedly not an Apple year. In some 

 sections, especially throughout the Atlantic 

 States, the apple crop was almost a complete 

 failure, and in Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, 

 Kansas, and still farther West, the fruit was 

 either scant in quantity or poor in quality. In 

 the Northwest, on the contrary, apples were 

 very abundant, of fair quality, but rotted badly. 

 Pears were better, but these were at least ten 

 per cent, less in quantity than the previous 

 year, and commanded very high prices. Plums 

 were very scarce, and brought high prices. 



The production of new fibrous plants for 

 textile purposes is still continued, and while 

 the ramie-plant is successfully cultivated in 

 some parts of the South, and its prepared 

 fibre brings a high price ($260 or $270 per ton) 

 in the English market, yet, until some machine 

 is invented to perform the difficult work of 

 separating the fibre from the stalk, it will not 

 be a very popular crop. Attention has been 

 paid to the raising of jute during the past two 

 or three years, and with good success, in the 

 Gulf States. In the manufacture of gunny- 

 cloth as well as for paper-fibre and other pur- 

 poses, there is an abundant market for all the 

 jute which can be grown, though, competing 

 as it does with the very low-priced Hindoo la- 

 bor, both in the cultivation and preparation of 

 this fibre for market, it is yet somewhat doubt- 

 ful whether it will prove a very profitable crop. 

 It cannot be raised successfully in the States 

 north of Tennessee. The attempts made to 

 introduce improved species or varieties of the 

 cotton-plant from Egypt and China have 

 proved unsuccessful. The Egyptian plant 

 grows finely and produces a very fine, silky 

 cotton (too fine for the ordinary cotton-gins to 

 clean without injury), but it is very late, and 

 yields much less than the ordinary varieties, 

 hardly one-third as much to the acre, the ex- 

 perimenters say. The Chinese cotton has no 

 good points adapting it to American culture. 

 Among other fibres which have been brought 

 into prominence within the past year for 

 paper-stock, for cordage, etc., are the leaves 

 of the palmetto, and the fibrous bark of the 

 baobab or Adansonia digitala. The latter 

 has become an article of commerce in the Eng- 

 lish market, where it commands $70 to $75 

 per ton. 



The attempts to introduce new and more 

 productive varieties of the cereals has been 

 attended with considerable success. It seems 

 to be pretty well settled that some of the new- 

 ly-introduced varieties of wheat and oats do 

 yield a larger amount of grain to the acre, and 

 the grain is of better quality, than the older 

 varieties, which have to some extent deterio- 



