BUYING A FAEil. 87 



effective cultivation. If the ridges were further 

 apart if each rocky or gravelly knoll were not in 

 close proximity to a strip of bog or morass it would 

 be different. But the genius of our age points un- 

 mistakably to cultivation by steam or some other me- 

 chanical application of power ; and this requires 

 spacious fields, with few or no obstacles to the equa- 

 ble progress of the plow. I apprehend that, for this 

 reason, the growth of bread-corn eastward of the 

 Hudson can never more be considerably extended, 

 so long as the boundless, fertile prairies can so easily 

 pour their exhaustless supplies upon us. Fruits, 

 Vegetables, Roots and Grass, we must continue to 

 grow, probably in ever-increasing abundance ; but 

 we of the East will buy our bread-corn largely if not 

 mainly from the West. 



He, therefore, who buys land in the Eastern States 

 should regard primarily its capacity to produce those 

 crops in which the East can never be supplanted 

 Grass, Fruits, Vegetables, Timber. If a farm will 

 also produce good Corn or Wheat, that is a recom- 

 mendation ; but let him place a higher value on those 

 capacities which will be more generally required and 

 drawn upon. 



In the West, the case is different; for, though 

 Wheat-culture still recedes before the footsteps of 

 advancing population, and Minnesota may soon cease 

 to grow for others, as Western New- York, Ohio, In- 

 diana, and Northern Illinois, have already done, yet 

 Indian Corn, being the basis of both Beef and Pork, 



