AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS. 



The following remarks, whicli have appeared in the Afark Lane Express and London 

 Farmers' Magazine^ may interest some of our readers : 



The agriculture of the Union has been less affected by external influence than that of Canada, 

 and more from internal energy — owing, no doubt, to the difference of the political relation between 

 thera and the mother country, coupled with the growth of their respective populations, the tide of 

 emigratiiin rolling principally into the boundless prairies of the former. Some of the older States 

 as New York, for instance, are densely populated, compared with Canada, and have proved an 

 example to the other States where the growth of society and civilization has been less. Hundreds 

 of thousands of emigrants have left the mother country with no other idea of destination than to 

 get to New York — once there, they would work their way into the interior as Providence might 

 direct their steps. Hence labor, an article of no small value in America, was more plentifutin 

 that State than in the others, creating a larger consumption and better markets — circumstances of 

 the highest importance to its agriculture, as they afforded the means of reclaiming its soil and 

 saving a little independence, ilany of the early settlers in this Stiite, although landing poor, 

 acquired capital sufficient to enable them to purchase estates for their families. 



But while an abundance of labor aided the progress of agriculture in this and older States simi- 

 laily situated, it was the means of sooner exhausting their soils, owing to the scourging system 

 followed, bringing their farmers, as it wei-e, to a stand-still — a fact which has lowered them in the 

 estimation of emigrants for nearly the last half century. "Human toil is often praised for being 

 highly productive,^' says Dr. Lee, an Ameriain writer, alluding to the question at issue, "when, had 

 the whole truth been known, it would have been seen to be remarkably destructive," as the counties 

 of New York have experienced; for the exhaustion of their soils have not only lowered them in 

 the estimation of emigrants, but of their own old settlei-s, many of whom sold out as soon as they 

 could find a purchaser, betaking themselves to the bush husbandry of the interior, beginning the 

 world afresh as they or their forefathers did. 



The rights of the public, we have said, embrace agricultural statistics — a subject on which the 

 American farmers and Congress appear more united than the English, and one in which they place 

 more importance, obviously because they take a more sound, comprehensive, and practical view of 

 it, attributing even the exhaustion of the soil to the want of the necessary statistical information ; 

 for, say they — quoting official authority, the Report of the Commissioner of Patents — "Good and 

 bad farming are now so blended, that delinquents escape all exposure ; while such as do well, are 

 denied that distinction which is the just reward of merit. There is no resisting a legitimate argu- 

 ment, sustained by conceded facts. Mistakes in practice, and errors in theory, must give way before 

 the light of truth : and the truth alone should be diligently sought and widely disseminated among 

 the farmers of the Republic." In short, it is not m. rely the number of acres and the amount of 

 produce which comprise American statistics — for they include the number of good and had farmers 

 also. For example : 



Of the 12,000,000 acres of improved lands in the State of New York, 1,000,000 are so cultivated 

 as to become richer from year to year — being in the hands of 40,000 farmers who read agricultural 

 journals, and nobly sustain the State and county societies of that commonwealth. Three millions 

 barely sustain their fertility, and are cultivated by a class of farmers who read not, but do their 

 best to follow the practice of the hist 8,000,000 acres are in the hands of 300,000 cultivators who 

 follow the old praclice of exhausting the soil, which has fallen from 30 to 5 bushels of wheat per 

 acre — Albany county, in 1845, producing only 7^ bushels per acre; Duchess county, 5; Columbia, 

 G; Reiit^selaer, 8; Westchester, 7, cfcc. ; while Albany, in 1775, produced from 20 to 40. The 

 300,000 persons that cultivated those 8,000,000 acres produce each annually 25 dollars less than 

 they would have done had the land not been exhausted. There is no escape from this oppressive 

 tax of 7,500,000 dollars, but either to improve the land at an expenditure of 100,000,000 dollars, or 

 run off and leave it. It is calculated that Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and 

 Georgia, have lost the equivalent of 500,000,000 dollars by exhaustion of land. 



It is not merely statistics generally as above, but individually as follows : "There are samples of 

 wool in the Patent Office, the product of a sheep that yields 18 lbs. of washed wool a year, and 

 weighs 420 lbs. This mammoth sheep is the property of Colonel Josiah Ware, of Clarke county, 

 Virginia, whose best fat wethers sell at 35 dollars a head." Other examples are given where flocks 

 which once yielded 5 lbs. per fleece, have now fallen to 2 lbs., <fec The great Washington's fell 

 from 5 to 2^ lbs, during his wars. 



The rights of the public, however, involve more than statistics ; for if the soil has been 

 exhausted, it has a right to know the cause and remedy, as well as the amount of exhaustion : but, 

 while it obviously enjoys this privilege, it has also its dutiae to perform toward the farmer. Hence 

 for the last eight or ten years the American Government has been collecting all the information 

 which the improvement of its agriculture demands, not only from individuals of the greatest talent 

 in its own provinces, but from all corners of the world, through the instrumentality of its Patent 

 Office, which collates and arranges the whole in the shape of an annual report of some six hundred 



