22 



be adopted. Stock must be kept, the farm kept freer from weeds, the 

 straw used instead of being burnt, and the manure from it, and from the 

 consumed food, returned to the land. Then, and not till then, will the 

 fertility of the rich prairie soils be conserved, and not wasted, as is too 

 often the case under the necessities of the first breaking up, and the 

 sparse settlement, of the country. That your rich prairie soils can, and 

 should, yield more produce than they do, is clear from the high yields 

 obtained occasionally, under favorable conditions of cultivation. 



TABLE XII 



Average yield per acre of Wheat and Indian Corn in the United States. 



(From Signal Service Reports.) 

 Six years 1875-1880. 



WHEAT BUSHELS. 



INDIAN COEN BUSHELS. 



Turning to Indian Corn, Table XII. shows that the yield of that 

 cereal is very much higher than that of wheat ; and the yield of nitrogen 

 per acre in those corn crops would doubtless be much greater than in 

 the wheat crops of the same localities. This is probably in part due to 

 the high condition of the soil under which the crop is generally grown, 

 corn generally following clover in the rotation. It is, however, doubtless 

 in part due to the growth of corn extending much further into the late 

 summer and autumn, the period during which nitrification is the most 

 active in the soil, and when therefore the supply of nitrates to the plant 

 will be greater under the same conditions of soil than in the case of 

 wheat. This would be a very interesting subject for investigation, in 

 the field and in the laboratory, tracing the nitrogen at various periods in 

 the soil, in the plant, and in the drainage waters. 



The following table (XIII.) gives estimates of the yield of various crops 

 on some Manitoba prairie soils : 



