SPFXIAL CROPS. 246 



have been less than two million tons, producing at least one 

 million tons of pulp — an amount sufficient to feed ninety thou- 

 sand cattle, or nearly one million sheep, for one year ; or to 

 fatten, in the winter months, nearly three times that number. 

 It also furnished more than one million five hundred thousand 



tons of manure. 



"In an agricultural point of view, the effect produced by the 

 culture of so much land in beets, and the application of the 

 manure of so many cattle, with the consequent increase in the 

 amount and value of subsequent crops, is perfectly apparent. 

 The quality of wheat raised after beets, is better than that 

 usually produced ; the ears are larger and heavier, the straw 

 stronger, and not so liable to lodge ; the berry is larger and 

 brighter; its specific gravity is also greater, weighing from two 

 to three pounds per bushel more than ordinary wheat. 



" The effect of its introduction into the United States would 

 be to produce results correspondingly greater than have at- 

 tended it in Europe, for here the consumption of sugar, per 

 capita, is nearly four times greater, and the value of lands is 

 not a quarter of those in Continental Europe, while they are by 

 nature far richer and more easily cultivated. The supply of 

 coal is unlimited. The vast distances over which many farmers 

 are obliged to transport their produce, render it difficult or im- 

 possible to dispose of their more bulky crops at a profit. The 

 introduction of sugar-making would give them another and 

 most profitable crop, for which they would have a home mar- 

 ket. It would enlarge the local demand for other farm produce, 

 by interspersing a manufacturing with an agricultural popula- 

 tion, to the great advantage of both. It would go far to change 

 the present wasteful, and necessarily uneuduring system of agri- 

 culture, and to substitute for it another, founded upon more 

 correct principles." 



