224 



STATISTICS OF WHEAT CULTURE. 



Table continued. 



Wheat, where the soil and the climate are adapted to its growth, 

 and the requisite progress has been made in its culture, is deci- 

 dedly preferred to all other grains, and, next to maize, is the most 

 important crop in the United States, not only on account of its 

 general use for bread, but for its safety and convenience for ex- 

 portation. It is not known to what country it is indigenous, any 

 more than any other cultivated cereals, all of which, no doubt, have 

 been essentially improved by man. By some, wheat is considered 

 to have been coeval with the creation, as it is known that upwards 

 of a thousand years before our era it was cultivated, and a superior 

 variety had been attained. It has steadily followed the progress 

 of civilisation from the earliest times, in all countries where it 

 would grow. In 1776 there was entailed upon America an en- 

 during calamity, in consequence of the introduction of the Hessian 

 or wheat fly, which was supposed to have been brought from 

 Germany in some straw, employed in the debarkation of Howe's 

 troops on the west end of Long Island. From that point the 

 insect gradually spread in various directions, at the rate of twenty 

 or thirty miles a year, and the wheat of the entire regions east of 

 the Alleghanies is now more or less infested with the larva, as well 

 as in large portions of the States bordering on the Ohio and Mis- 

 sissippi, and on the great Lakes ; and so great have been the ravages 

 of these insects that the cultivation of this grain has in many 

 places been abandoned. 



The geographical range of the wheat region in the Eastern Con- 

 tinent and Australia, lies principally between the 30th and 60th 

 parallels of north latitude, and the 30th and 40th degrees south, 

 being chiefly confined to France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sicily, 

 Greece, Turkey, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, 

 Prussia, Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Ireland, Northern 

 and Southern Africa, Tartary, India, China, Australia, Van 

 Diemen's Land, and Japan. Along the Atlantic portions of the 

 Western Continent, it embraces the tract lying between the 30th 



