204 VALUE OF NEW BLOOD. 



Its literary tastes may be judged of from the fact that, 

 besides common and grammar schools, a Protestant uni- 

 versity has just been opened ; that the Roman Catholics 

 have a seminary, which they talk of converting into a 

 university ; and that, besides general libraries, it has a 

 law library belonging to the State, already containing 

 3000 volumes. 



Not only rapid prosperity, but an active and energetic 

 population of men horn elsewhere^ is implied in all this. 

 Local advantages gave rise to Rochester, and will 

 advance it very much farther. But whatever be the 

 local position, an introduction of new blood — of men who 

 will look upon old and familiar things with new eyes — 

 always helps a place forward. Progress, therefore, can- 

 not fail to be rapid, when, in addition to manifest phy- 

 sical advantages, still imperfectly developed, the blood 

 of the whole city is new^ untied and untrammelled by 

 old notions, or hampered by forefather prejudices. 



Rochester is the proper home of the celebrated Genesee 

 flour. But the Genesee flour of the New York mer- 

 chants is something like the Wallsend coals of the Lon- 

 don Coal Exchange. It is the brand or designation of 

 a superior quality of flour, which has obtained a name 

 in the New York and Atlantic markets, and which is 

 made now from wheat grown in various western locali- 

 ties. The quantity of flour manufactured at Rochester, 

 in 1848, was about 700,000 barrels, requiring upwards 

 of 3,000,000 of bushels of wheat. Of the yearly 

 increasing quantity thus ground up by the Rochester 

 millers, a large proportion is annually brought from 

 other States by way of the Erie Canal, the railroad, and 

 the lakes. 



The Genesee Valley, which gives its name to the finest 

 samples of flour, produces wheat of the best quality. 

 The soil on which it is grown is for the most part a rich 

 drift clay — the ruins of the Onondaga salt-group — inter- 



