ABOUT FRUITS, FLOWERS AND FARMING. 127 



neither soil nor climate was supposed to favor it. How 

 then have both soil and climate been persuaded to relent, 

 and permit from twenty to forty bushels to grow to the 

 acre ? It was no accident, and no series of blind but lucky 

 blunders, that effected the change. It was thinking that did 

 it. It was a change wrought by science. Elliot (in Con- 

 necticut), Deane (both clergymen), Dexter, Lowell, Fes- 

 senden, and many others, all men of science, were pioneers. 

 Agricultural surveys, geological surveys, and skillful chemi- 

 cal analyses of the soil and its products have been made for, 

 now, a series of years. A Hitchcock, a Dana, a Jackson 

 have applied science to agriculture. Pamphlets, books, and 

 widely circulated newspapers have diffused this knowledge. 

 Agricultural societies, state and county ; farmers' meetings 

 for diKcussion, such as are held every winter in Boston, 

 have awakened the mind of farmers, and by learning to 

 treat their soils skillfully, good wheat is raised in large 

 quantities on soils naturally very averse to wheat. 



The average crop of wheat in great Britain is twenty-six 

 bushels to the acre, but forty and fifty are common to good 

 limners; sixty, seventy, and even eighty have been raised 

 by great care. 



In the whole United States it will not average much more 

 than fifteen. A comparison of the two countries will show 

 a corresponding inferiority on our part in the application of 

 science to agriculture. Scotland, formerly, hardly raised 

 wheat. Since the formation of the Highland Agricultural 

 Society in Scotland, wheat has averaged fifty-one bushels to 

 the acre ! Ellsworth's Report for 1844, p. 16. 



Lord Ilardwicke stated, in a speech before the Royal 

 Agricultural Society of England, that fine Suffolk wheat 

 had produced seventy-six bushels per acre; and another 

 and improved variety had yielded eighty-two bushels 

 per acre ! This was the result of " book farming " in a 

 country where anti-book farmers raise twenty-six bushels 

 to the acre. 



