250 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



regard for his own interest had induced him to confer. Here, however, his in- 

 fluence ceased. The remittance of his capital and accumulated profits created a 

 vent for the products of the very fields of which it was the price, to an equal 

 amount, and the account Avas balanced without farther profit or loss to either hand. 

 The Wadsworths, on the other hand, adopted as the principle of their action, 

 that their profits should be reinvested upon the spot, and in this way gave a 

 second impulse to the industry of their neighborhood. Thus, while a part of the 

 original purchase was actually disposed of in fee, a larger quantity of land than 

 was sold was added to the estate. Of this, the death of Gen. William Wads- 

 worth without children left the subject of our Memoir the sole proprietor. 



Mr. Wadsworth was probably the only instance, since the breaking out of the 

 Revolutionary contest, of the investment of a fortune accumulated by the indus- 

 try of a whole life, in agricultural propertyi In most, if not all, of the other 

 cases in which fortune has been derived from the purchase and sale of land, it 

 lias been changed in its investment from the tillable soil, to city lots or moneyed 

 securities. It would be difficult to form an estimate of the enormous magnitude 

 of the amount which has thus been drawn, in the western part of the State of 

 ^ev/-York alone, from the support of Agriculture. Flourishing as that region 

 is, imagination can hardly ccaiceive how much more flourishing it might have 

 been had the whole of the profit derived from the rise in the value of its wild 

 lands been reinvested upon the spot. 



The estate of the Wadsworths, reserved in compliance with the principle 

 originally adopted, that their capital should not be withdrawn from the re- 

 gion in which it was accumulated, was partly held in their own hands, part- 

 ly leased, and partly cultivated " upon shares." The Home Farm, cultivated 

 ynder their own immediate direction, comprises upward of two thousand 

 acres, of which more than half is a rich alluvial fiat of the Genesee River. — 

 This portion was for many years the only part from which any profit was de- 

 rived ; and to the raising and feeding of cattle, of which mention has already 

 been made, was added the culture of hemp, for which crop the inexhaustible fer- 

 tility of the soil was admirably adapted. The hilly land which borders the al- 

 luvial soil on the east was, in its original state, what is styled an " oak open- 

 ing," namely, a swelling surface studded with gigantic black oak trees, and free 

 from undergrowth. The latter had been kept down by the fires which the In- 

 dians were accustomed to light in it, for the purpose of rendering it a profitable 

 hunting ground. Where this custom is put a stop to, young trees and bushes 

 speedily made their appearance, and unless cultivation of some description be 

 applied, the whole soon becomes a tangled thicket. This description of land 

 was at first considered to be of little value. When, however, the state of the 

 Spanish peninsula led to the importation of considerable flocks of Merino sheep, 

 the Wadsworths were speedily among the largest proprietors of animals of that 

 species, which were fed upon the uplands ; and the high price which the fleeces 

 long bore upon the seaboard, sufficed to defray the cost of the tedious transporta- 

 tion to the navigable Avaters of the Hudson. Experience has shown that the 

 oak openings, so much underrated at first, are better fitted for the growth of 

 wheat than any other soils. But it is not surprising that this valuable property 

 should have so tardily developed as to be considered by some a fortuitous dis- 

 covery. It was not until the Erie Canal was opened, that wheat would yield a - 

 return of the bare freiglit from the Genesee Kiver to a market, and hence there 

 was no inducement to cultivate more of that grain than could lie consumed oa 



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