474 BUENA VISTA COUNTY, IOWA. 



acres averaged fifty-three bushels to the acre, allowing seventy 

 pounds to the bushel in the ear. 



WHEAT. 



In the year 1874, I sowed forty acres of wheat, on land 

 that had been in with wheat, oats and flax, the previous year. 

 I sowed about thirteen acres of each. The ground after wheat, 

 oats and flax were harvested, was plowed early in the Fall, 

 across the land, where each crop had been raised, and all sown 

 in Spring in two days, so that my ground was all farmed alike 

 and together. 



I sowed a bushel and a half of wheat on an acre. When 

 harvested the wheat grown on the flax stubble was considera- 

 bly larger in its growth than on either the oat stubble, or the 

 wheat stubble, and of a much brighter color. 



I cut my wheat with a self-raking reaper, and when going 

 so as to cross the plats that had been sown with wheat, oats, 

 and flax, I found the rake would bring off a larger sheaf as 

 soon as the- machine entered the flax ground, and the binders 

 decided that there was one-fifth more wheat on this than on 

 either oi the other plats, where wheat and oats had been raised 

 the previous year. The kernel of wheat on flax ground was 

 also brighter and plumper than on the other land. I am well 

 satisfied that it yielded from three to five bushels more to the 

 acre than on the other land. The crop on the wheat and oat 

 stubble appeared to be about alike. Since that season I have 

 never seen a piece of wheat sown on flax ground which was not 

 a fair crop, and always free from rust and blight, while wheat 

 sown on corn stalk ground, in this part of Iowa, is almost every 

 season more or less rusted and blighted. 



FLAX. 



I would not recommend flux as a general crop, for the 

 reason that it seems to exhaust the strengtli .of the soil more 

 than other crops, but whenever I do raise it, I shall follow 

 with a wheat crop. I find also, that corn, when it follows 

 flax, will not make near as fine a crop as on land where some 



