AYERAGE PRODUCE OF WESTERN NEW YORK. 209 



year were valued at the price of one yoke of oxen, or of 

 50 bushels of wheat. Now they are equal to the value 

 of two yoke of oxen, or of 100 bushels of wheat. This 

 does not indicate a corresponding money-rise in the 

 wages of labour. The difference is partly caused by a 

 fall in the market-value of agricultural produce ; but, as 

 all other necessaries of life are at least as cheap as they 

 were forty years ago, the condition of the agricultural 

 labourer must have greatly improved. I doubt if, in 

 any part of our own islands, the same can be said in 

 regard to the condition of our agricultural labourers. 



What this district of country originally was in ferti- 

 lity may be inferred from what it still is. The average 

 produce per acre of its three most fertile counties, as 

 recently published, is represented by the numbers in the 

 following table : — 



Compare the numbers opposite wheat and barley, and it 

 will appear at once that this is eminently a wheat- 

 country ; and then consider that, after all the exhausting 

 culture to which it has been so long subjected, it still 

 yields an average of from 16 to 18 bushels of wheat per 

 acre, and we shall have an idea of what its natural 

 fertility as a region must originally have been — what, I 

 may say, its fertility will still become, when the exertions 

 of its agricultural societies and of its many spirited im- 

 provers shall have produced their destined effect, (I hope 

 I may so speak of it) upon the practical cultivation of 

 its grateful soil. 



VOL. 1. 



