

m 



830 THE GENESEE FAEMEE. 



tinent. Our cheap periodical is a help to other agricultural papers, not a competitor. 

 They have started into existence after it. This pioneer publication, and its patrons of a 

 quarter of a century, have created a demand for agricultural reading, and a score of new 

 journals are profiting by it. We wish them all success ; for there are still hundreds 

 of thousands, nay millions, that read no similar wort, and aftect to despise all book 

 knowledge. 



Whatever discoveries are made in rural arts and sciences in Europe or this country, 

 will be sure to receive an early notice in this journal. Congress lias printed and order* d 

 printed three hundred and ninety thousand volumes of the agricultural books prepared 

 by the wi-iter in the Patent Office ; and we have given in the Journal of the United 

 States Agricultural Society/, many months in advance of Government, the agi-icultural 

 statistics of every State and Territory, as taken at the last census, and corrected at the 

 Census Office down to July 2 2d of this year. These official tables will be found in the 

 present number of the Farmer. If each subscriber, in ordering this paper for 1853, 

 will induce his friends and neighbors to add their names to our list, both they and the 

 editor will be benefitted, as well as the forming community. 



So far as time and ability will permit, we shall be happy to answer all inquiries that 

 our readers may please to make, without charge ; as we shall be thankful for every item 

 of knowledge either in husbandry or horticulture, adapted to the character of this paper, 

 and not already sufficiently known. 



Now is the time to subscribe for the coming year ; for our terms are strictly pay in 

 advance ; the profits being only a few cents on each volume of the work. 



WHEAT CULTURE. 



After noticing the unprecedented drouth that lias prevailed in central Illinois the past 

 season, Mr. A. Stevens, of Peoria, says : " I have read your articles on the culture of 

 wheat, with great satisfaction ; and I hope that you will continue the subject until the 

 raising of that grain, though not a new business, shall be better understood by western 

 farmers at least, than it ever has been even by the most practical and intelligent of 

 them." 



The two most common defects in wheat culture at the west, are the use of impure 

 seed, or sowing clean seed on foul land, and a total disregard of the essential elements 

 of the crop, which ought to abound in the soil to secure a profitable harvest. As a 

 question of economy, the annual loss that accrues from the use of bad seed, and the 

 propagation of pestiferous plants and weeds, should be pondered, not only by every 

 wheat-grower, but by every other person who cultivates so much as a rood of land. 

 Carelessness in this regard is a distinguishing feature in American tillage, whether on a 

 wheat farm of a thousand arable acres, or in a small village garden. Some of our New 

 York, New England, and Pennsylvania readers, will regard this remark too severe ; but 

 their better system of farming is only an exception to the general rule, which may be 

 seen in all its deformity in the western, southern, and middle States. It is rare indeed 

 that one meets with a field of wheat in Virginia or Maryland that is entirely free from 

 garlic, the seeds of which damage the crop from five to twenty per cent, of its value. 

 A volume might be written on the injury done by weeds, and the best means of extir- 

 pating them, without exhausting the subject. Clean land and pure seed are elements 

 of profit in wheat culture, and agriculture generally, that we can not too often nor too 

 earnestly commend to the attention of our readers. But neither clean land, nor pure 

 seed, nor deep and thorough tillage, will long make wheat-growing ])rofitable on the 

 same fields, unless the raw material consumed and wasted in the processes carried on 





