210 



FARMERS' REGISTER. 



[No. 4. 



it will be found that the average of this state, is 

 Superior to that of any other in the union. 



How profit is to arise out of this, will now be 

 seen; it has thus been calculated: 



Rent or interest of capital, 4s. 6d.; one plough- 

 ing and harrowing, 5s. 7^d.; harvest. 4s. 6d.; 

 seed, five pecks, 5s. 7Jd.: total £1 0s. 3d. Straw 

 pays ibr the thrashing. Twelve bushels, at 4s. 

 6d. the usual price before the present excessive 

 rise, £2 14s. leaving a profit of £1 13s. 9d. As 

 by another mode of reckoning, rent or interest = 

 one bushel, ploughing and harrowing = one and 

 a half bushels, harvest = one, seed = one, taxes, 

 and all other small articles, = half a bushel; to- 

 gether, five bushels; leaving a profit of seven, 

 which at 4s. 6d. amount to £1 lis. 6d. This 

 has been looked upon as sufficient profit, when it 

 was considered that maize, not wheat, is the most 

 profitable crop of the farm, according to the com- 

 mon opinion of the country. 



But I think it would be easy to prove, and it is 

 so held by those who have paid most, attention to 

 the subject, that maize is every where a losing 

 crop, and has been destructive to America; but it 

 is not to our purpose here to inquire into the fact; 

 should, however, this opinion not be well founded, 

 the £l lis. 6d. above stated as profit, certainly is 

 not net; because the wheat and the maize must 

 pay for their neglected waste, and also for the 

 worn out old-field, which produces little or no- 

 thing. 



Should this deduction be allowed, little profit 

 can be found in the present mode of agriculture 

 of this country, and I apprehend it to be a fact, 

 that it affords a bare subsistence. 



The quality of the wheat of this state, is the 

 only thing that remains to be considered. 



The wheat of New York is esteemed the best 

 of any in the United States, and that grown on 

 the banks and branches of the river Mohawk, the 

 best in the state. 



I had opportunities of examining considerable 

 quantities of it, at Albany, in October, 1794, and 

 found it in general of a very good quality, clean, 

 and well dressed: the best sample that I could 

 meet with (and which probably was as good as 

 any that could have been produced,) weighed, by 

 the bushel that was said to accord pretty accurate- 

 ly with that of Winchester, which is the only 

 measure of grain known upon this continent, 64^ 

 lbs.: this, I was informed, was the utmost weight 

 of wheat produced in any part of America. 



The standard weight is 60 lbs. for all extra 

 weight in all purchases, the grower is paid an ad- 

 ditional price; and he deducts in proportion for all 

 that falls short of it. It is good wheat that weighs 

 68 or 59 lbs. 



JERSEY, PENNSYLVANIA, DELAWARE, AND 

 MARYLAND, 



Have so many circumstances in common, that 

 they may, in this instance, be taken together: ex- 

 cept Pennsylvania, none have any backlands, and 

 these have only been settled since the peace, are 

 yet not much known, and little produce has yet 

 come to market from them. These four states 

 much resemble each other in the nature of their 

 climate, and quality of their soil, and, from a long 

 continued course of bad cultivation, are much in 

 the same exhausted state; the crops heretofore 



have been in the following rotation. First, year, 

 maize; second, wheat; third, rubbish pasture. 

 By this frequent recurrence of the same crops, 

 the land had become so far exhausted, as not to 

 produce, upon an average, more than six bushels 

 per acre of wheat; and much land still continues 

 in the same course of cultivation; but. an altera- 

 tion has of late pretty generally taken place, in 

 which one of the following rotations will be met 

 with; first year, maize; second, wheat; third and 

 fourth, rubbish pasture: or first, maize; second, 

 fallow; third, wheat; fourth, rubbish pasture; but 

 the lallow is slated to be so very imperfect, as to 

 be little better than the rubbish pasture; or in the 

 same year with wheat, frequently buckwheat 

 standing for seed will be met with: either of these 

 rotations will produce eight bushels of wheat. 

 Clover is in some places just beginning to be in- 

 troduced, and is said to increase the produce of 

 wheat at least five bushels to the acre, in some 

 such course as the following: first, wheat; se- 

 cond, maize; third, wheat; fourth and fifth, clo- 

 ver: or first, wheat and buckwheat; second, clo- 

 ver; third, maize; fourth, wheat; fifth and sixth, 

 clover, or other variations of these crops. 



In the peninsula of Maryland and Delaware, 

 which produces the best wheat in this district, the 

 old rotation of maize, wheat, rubbish pasture, is 

 still continued, and the average produce of" it is 

 thought not to exceed six bushels per acre: in 

 some instances, not more than two bushels are 

 produced, and much is so bad as to be ploughed up 

 again. 



Not more than three pecks of wheat are sown 

 for corn-land wheat; that is, wheat sown after 

 maize, here emphatically called corn. From this 

 lamentable state of ignorant cultivation, must be 

 excepted the tract in Pennsylvania, inhabited by 

 the Germans. 



This industrious people, fortunate in possessing 

 one of the finest parts of America, the country at 

 the eastern foot of the mountains in Pennsylvania, 

 have, either from superior knowledge when they 

 arrived in the country, or superior attention to Ihe 

 nature of the soil and the climate, brought the 

 cultivation of their country to a degree of excel- 

 lence, which may vie with that of many of the 

 old countries of Europe: their wheat may be 

 averaged at eighteen bushels per acre; twenty- 

 five bushels are frequent, aud instances of thirty 

 are not wanting; sufficient proof of what the 

 country is capable of producing, were the culture 

 of it well attended to. Their barns, their build- 

 ings, their meadows and pastures, are all in a 

 style of neatness and perfection, unknown in other 

 parts of A merica; by the use of gypsum they 

 have clover, and by irrigation, meadows superior, 

 particularly the former, to any I ever saw else- 

 where, either in America or England: to them 

 ought certainly to be given the credit of introdu- 

 cing irrigation into this part of America, and, I be- 

 lieve, the knowledge of gypsum into every part of 

 it. 



The tract, however, which they occupy, com- 

 paratively with the four states now under view, is 

 of so small an extent, that I cannot estimate the 

 average produce of the whole of these four states, 

 at more than eight bushels per acre; the abundant 

 crops of the Germans will not counterbalance the 

 six bushel crops, and those of even less, of so 

 many extensive parts of them. The profit arising 



