GExNESEE FARMER. 



Nov, 



bers can be formed. According to the most re- 

 liable analysis, an acre of potatoes, tops and 

 roots, weighing 7,870 lbs. dried, require in their 

 Organization 193 lbs. of pure potash and soda. — 

 Ashes and common salt will supply these ele- 

 ments ; but others are also needed, which a little 

 gypsum and bones will furnish. 



Nothing is more certain than the fact that, to 

 withhold from any being, whether vegetable or 

 animal, its appropriate food, is to impair its con- 

 stitution, and expose it in an eniinent degree to 

 become diseased and destroyed by injuries, 

 whether by insects or other agents, that would 

 fall harmless on well fed, strong, and healthy 

 Systems. A violation of the laws of Organic 

 Life will be fatal, sooner or later, according to 

 the extent of such violation, not only to particu- 

 lar beings, but to the family in which the injured 

 individual is a connecting link between the past 

 and the future. From this cause, many families 

 in the "highest class or genus of beings, that, of 

 man, have become extinct, although once en- 

 dowed with great vital force. For wise purposes, 

 God destroys f^imilies that, from generation to 

 generation, consume more than they produce, 

 in idleness, extravagance, and vice. Thi3 is 

 doubtless done to make room for the expansion 

 of families, di.stinguished alike for their industry 

 and temperance, and the physical, moral, and in- 

 tellectual strength, which Labor and Virtue al- 

 ways confer. If we vie\y human action in its 

 proper light, it will be found impossible, in the 

 order of Providence, for man to inflict injury 

 ■ ipon others, even on a potato plant, greatly need- 

 ed as it is by the poor,. without bringing on him- 

 self or his offspring a greater injury. But it is 

 unnecessary for us to moralize on this subject; 

 although morality and agriculture are more inti- 

 mately connected than many .suppose. Without 

 any especial violation of natural laws, we have 

 no doubt that varieties of plants as well as animals 

 will, one day, cease to have any living repre- 

 sentatives on the earth. The researches made 

 in that department of Geology called Paloeontol- 

 ogy, which investigates fossil plants and animals, 

 leave no room for doubt in regard to the extinc- 

 tion of many races, that have flourished for thou- 

 sands of years on the globe. Hence, our able 

 contemporary, Mr. Beecher, editor of the Indi- 

 ana Farmer and Gardner, expresses a general 

 truth too strongly when he says in a recent arti- 

 cle : " Any one tree may wear out ; hmt a varie- 

 ty never." A family of plants, or variety of such 

 family, may endure for indefinite ages. But in 

 the ceasriless progress of Time, an epoch will ar- 

 rive when this family, like all the extinct families, 

 from the recent mastodon downward, will have 

 no living representative to perpetuate its lineage. 



We can not dismiss this subject v/ithout remark- 

 ing that constitutional weakness in the potato 

 plant can be remedied as well by propagation 

 rom the germs in the tuber, as from the seeds 



in the ball. The vital principle is as feeble, as 

 much exharisted in the one organ of the being 

 that forms embryos, as in the other. If vitality 

 be lacking in the germ found in the potato or 

 tuber, it cannot be more abundant in the seed. — 

 If plants germinated from seeds, appear more 

 healthy and vigorous than those from the tuber 

 which gave the seeds, it is owing to extraneous 

 circumstances, better care, keeping, less expo- 

 sure, or some other incident. Unwise culture is 

 only the predisposing cause of the potato rot; 

 while the active agent exists unseen, and unap- 

 preciable in the atmosphere, like "the pestilence 

 that ^^alketh in darkness." We have good rea- 

 son for the remark that, by supplying the crop 

 with the precise ingredients requii-ed to form it, 

 in its perfect state, and at the same time avoiding 

 the bad practice of sprouting before planting, the 

 peculiar malaria, insect, Cryptogamic, or parasit- 

 ic plant, or whatever else may complete the 

 work of destruction, will pass harmless over the 

 potato field. 



Wheat Onlture. 



The farmers of Monroe county sow annually 

 about 72,000 acres in wheat, and harvest not far 

 from 1,400,000 bushels of this most valuable 

 grain. The breadth of land sown last year, ac- 

 cording to the Census, was 72,635 acres; while 

 the acres harvested were 68,383. These facts 

 are interesting, because they show that wheat 

 culture is on the inci-ease in the Genesee coun- 

 try, there being 4,252 acres sown in one county 

 in 1845 more than there were in the year pre- 

 vious. The average yield is something less than 

 20 bushels per acre. That this is a very profit- 

 able crop may be safely inferred from the cir- 

 cumstance that about one-third of the plow land 

 in Monroe county has constantly a wheat crop 

 on it. The whole amount of land in meadow, 

 pasture, and tillage, is 281,011 acres. Deduct 

 only one-fifth of this for moist land permanently 

 in meadows or pastures, and it leaves 224,809 

 acres of wheat laud. Divide this sum by 3, and 

 it will give but a fraction more than the number 

 of acres annually sown with Avheat in the county. 



It is taxing the natural resources of the soil 

 pretty severely to take from it a crop of wheat 

 every third year, and send the grain out of the 

 county to distant markets. Our researches, how- 

 ever, by chemical analysis, into the composition 

 of the soil, and of the fragments of rocks, which 

 being broken up into pebbles, and ground into 

 powder, form the principal weight and substance 

 of all soils, warrant us in saying that, with skil- 

 ful management, this land may be cropped with 

 wheat every third year without impairing its en- 

 during productiveness. But what /s skilful man- 

 agement? No general rule can be laid down 

 which shall embrace the best practice applicable 

 alike to all soils, under all conditions'and circum- 

 stances. 



