No. 133. J 315 



lars per annum ; and when reproached with such a waste of mo- 

 ney, he replied, it is manure spread upon the ground to secure a 

 more abundant harvest. He also greatly encouraged manufac- 

 tures, arts, and commerce. Notwithstanding his tremendous mil- 

 itary deeds, he left his country vastly improved, and lie left sixty 

 millions of dollars behind him in the treasury. 



Mr. Meigs — Ffteen hundred thousand dollars a year for agri- 

 culture! How much a year has the United States expended for 

 the encouragment of agriculture ? Have they answered the beg- 

 ging of Washington fifty or sixty years ago 1 



The premiums given in the year 1851, by all the societies and 

 governments of the United States for the promotion of agriculture, 

 do not amount to the thirtieth part of Frederick's annual appro- 

 priation, made a hundred years ago ; and yet the authorities, both 

 state and national, all know how greatly the main crops of our 

 country have fallen in yield, and are every year yielding less, as 

 a general fact. 



Mr. 'Meigs read the following extracts from the Transactions 

 of the Royal Agriculture Society of England, vol. 5. 



INSECTS INJURIOUS TO CROPS. 

 Mr. T. G. Clithero observed, that in the neighborhood of my 

 native place, in the county of York, is a rookery, belonging to 

 Mr. Vavasour, Esq., of Weston, in Warfdale, in whichj it is esti- 

 mated that there are ten thousand rooks ; that one pound of food 

 a week is very moderate allowance for each bird, and that nine- 

 tenths of their food consists of worms, insects, and their larvse ; 

 for, although they do considerable damage to the fields for a few 

 weeks in harvest, particularly in backward seasons, yet a very • 

 largt proportion of their food, even at the seasons, consist of 

 insects and worms, which (if we except a few acorns and walnuts 

 in autumn) compose at all other times, the whole of their sub- 

 sistence. 



Here then, if my data are correct, there is the enormous quan- 

 tity of 468,000 pounds, or 209 tons of worms, insects and their 

 larvae destroyed by the rooks of a single rookery, in one year. 



