10 AMERICAN POMOLOGY. 



Our government wisely provides for the gathering of 

 statistics at intervals of ten years, and some of the States 

 also take an account of stock and production at interme- 

 diate periods, some of them, like Ohio, have a permanent 

 statician who reports annually to the Governor of the 

 State. 



Our Boards of Trade publish the amounts of the lead- 

 ing articles that arrive at and depart from the principal 

 cities, and thus they furnish us much additional informa- 

 tion of value. Besides this, the county assessors are 

 sometimes directed to collect statistics upon certain points 

 of interest, and now that we all contribute toward the ex- 

 tinction of the national debt, the United States Assessors 

 in the several districts are put in possession of data, which 

 should be very correct, in regard to certain productions 

 that are specified by act of Congress as liable to taxation. 

 By these several means we may have an opportunity of 

 learning from time to time what are the productions of 

 the country, and their aggregate amounts are surprising 

 to most of us. When they relate to our special interests, 

 they are often very encouraging. This is particularly the 

 case with those persons who have yielded to the popular 

 prejudice that cotton was the main "agricultural production 

 of the United States ; to such it will be satisfactory to 

 learn that the crop of corn, as reported in the last census, 

 is of nearly equal value, at the usual market prices of each 

 article. Fruit-growers will be encouraged to find that the 

 value of orchard products, according to the same returns, 

 was nearly twenty millions, that of Ohio being nearly one 

 million ; of New York, nearly three and three-quarters 

 millions ; that the wine crop of the United States, an in- 



