NATIONAL IGNORANCE OF THE AGRICULTURAL INTEREST. 393 



the most fertile fields of the valley of the Mississippi. Yet these 

 very acres now yield only twelve or fourteen bushels each, and the 

 average yield of the county of Dutchess one of the most fertile 

 and best managed on the Hudson, is at the present moment only 

 six bushels of wheat to the acre ! One of our cleverest agricultural 

 writers has made the estimate, that of the twelve millions of acres 

 of cultivated land in the State of New-York, eight millions are in 

 the hands of the " skinners," who take away every thing from the 

 soil, and put nothing back ; three millions in the hand of farmers 

 who manage them so as to make the lands barely hold their own, 

 while one million of acres are well farmed, so as to maintain a high 

 and productive state of fertility. And as New- York is confessedly 

 one of the most substantial of all the older States, in point of agri- 

 culture, this estimate is too flattering to be applied to the older 

 States. Even Ohio newly settled as she is, begins to fall off per 

 acre, in her annual wheat crop, and before fifty years will, if the 

 present system continues, be considered a worn out soil. 



The evil at the bottom of all this false system of husbandry, is 

 no mystery. A rich soil contains only a given quantity of vegeta- 

 ble and mineral food for plants. Every crop grown upon a fertile 

 soil, takes from it a certain amount of these substances, so essential 

 to the growth of another crop. If these crops, like most of our 

 grain crops, are sent away and consumed in other counties, or other 

 parts of the counties as in the great cities, and none of their essen- 

 tial elements in the way of vegetable matter, lime, potash, etc., 

 restored to the soil, it follows as a matter of course, that eventually 

 the soil must become barren or miserably unprofitable. And such 

 is, unfortunately, the fact. Instead of maintaining as many animals 

 as possible upon the farm, and carefully restoring to the soil in the 

 shape of animal and mineral manure, all those elements needful to 

 the growth of future vegetables, our farmers send nearly all their 

 crops for sale in cities and allow all the valuable animal and 

 mineral products of these crops to go to waste in those cities.* 



" Oh ! but," the farmer upon worn out land will say, " we cannot 



* In Belgium the most productive country in the world, the urinary 

 excrements of each cow are sold for $10 a year, and are regularly applied 

 to the land, and poudrette is valued as gold itself. 



