112 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



Six hundred pounds is estimated, in some districts, as an 

 average ; but it should be observed that little, if any, seed 

 is obtained. The average crop in New England, as far as 

 our information extends, cannot be estimated at more than 

 two hundred pounds, and six or eight bushels of seed. (We 

 do not include the rich bottoms on the Connecticut, and 

 some other rivers.) Dr. Deane was of opinion, that four 

 hundred pounds might be calculated on with proper ma- 

 nagement. 



' We think that four hundred pounds of good clean flax, 

 and eight or ten bushels of seed, may fairly be assumed as 

 a medium crop on favorable soils, where the culture becomes 

 such an object as to make other farming operations subservi- 

 ent to it, and due attention is paid to change of seed. 



' Those who grow flax to any extent are of opinion that 

 the seed, at the price it has been for some years past, pays 

 for all the labor bestowed on the crop to the time the flax 

 is ready to be prepared or rotted. 



WHEAT. To raise good wheat is considered, both in 

 America and Europe, as an object of prime consequence to 

 the cultivator, and agricultural writers have of course been 

 very voluminous on the subject. We shall select and con- 

 dense some of their remarks, which appear to us of the great- 

 est importance, and add what our own observation and ex- 

 perience has suggested. 



Wheat is thought to be the most useful of the farinaceous 

 plants ; and as the bounty of Providence has generally de- 

 creed that those things which are most useful shall be most 

 common, wheat accordingly will grow in almost any part of 

 the globe. It thrives not only in temperate, but in very hot 

 and in very cold regions : in Africa and Siberia, as well as in 

 the United States and Great Britain. It requires a good 

 loamy soil, not too light nor too heavy. The Memoirs of 

 the New York Board of Agriculture, vol. ii. p. 28, state that 

 ' wheat grows best on land which contains just as much clay 

 as can be combined with it without subjecting the wheat to 

 be frozen out.' And the author of that article, Mr. Amos 

 Eaton, observes, ' Since it is the clay which absorbs and 

 retains most of the water injurious in wheat soils, I adopted 

 a rule for the consideration of farmers, founded on that prin- 

 ciple, and confirmed by all the observations I have been 



