172 AVERAGE OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK. 



and 16 milk-cows are kept. If the land be foul, it is 

 now summer fallowed, and sown with wheat, followed 

 by seeds as before, after which Indian corn comes again. 

 If it is not foul, the rotation commences with Indian 

 corn after the first two years' grass. 



On land like this extraordinary green shale land, such 

 severe — what we should call scourging — treatment may 

 be continued a great many years with apparent 

 impunity ; although it tells very soon on land of inferior 

 quality. But even on such land it tells at last. Hence 

 it is that this celebrated wheat-region, as a wJiole^ is 

 gradually approaching the exhausted condition to which 

 the more easterly wheat-growing, naturally poorer 

 districts, had earlier arrived. They are ceasing, in 

 many places, to be remunerative in the culture of this 

 crop with the present system of farming, are becoming 

 unable to compete with the cheap wheat-growing virgin 

 soils of the West, and are therefore in such places — as I 

 was informed on the spot — gradually being laid down 

 to grass, or turned to other more promising agricultural 

 uses. 



The average produce per acre of the whole State of 

 New York, as published by the State Agricultural 

 Society,* is, for — 



Wheat, 14 bushels, i Oats, 26 bushels. 



Barley, 16 ... | Indian corn, 25 



Potatoes, 90 bushels, or about 1^ tons an acre. 



The averages for Monroe County, in the middle of 

 this western district, are the highest ; and they are as 

 follow : — 



Wheat, \^\ bushels. 1 Indian corn, 30 bushels. 



Barley, 19 " ... | Potatoes, 110 ... 



Oats, . . 32 bushels. 



For a highly lauded, fertile, wheat-growing district, 



* Transactions of the State Agricultural Society , for 1845. 



