INTRODUCTION. xxxiii 



Them is hero nothing to indicate that the soil of New England was ever very well adapted to 

 the production of wheat, and that it has been exhausted by tillage. The reason so little wheat is raised 

 in those States is simply, as Mr. Adams says, &quot;it will not procure a price equal to the labor.&quot; Other 

 crops pay better. 



In the middle States the production of wheat is also less in I860 than in 1850 by some four and 

 a half millions of bushels, while during the same period the population increased over one and a half 

 million. 



There are several causes which conspire to produce this result. Competition with the west, and 

 consequent low prices, is one cause; want of capital to admit of a higher system of farming generally, 

 another. 



Agriculture in the middle States is in a transition state. We have abstracted from the soil nearly 

 all the accumulated organic matter derived from natural sources, and have not yet fully realized the 

 necessity of enriching the soil by the application of manure. Farmers have been proverbially slow to 

 adopt new ideas and practices. Many continue to grow wheat in the same manner, and with as little 

 preparation, as when the country was new, and the soil abounded in available plant-food. They fail to 

 get as good crops as formerly; but too many persevere in the old way, hoping lor better success, and of 

 course are disappointed. 



In the middle States we must make more manure, and cultivate our land better, before we can 

 reasonably expect to grow good crops of wheat. There are many farmers who understand this, and are 

 doing their utmost to enrich their land, but the majority put in their wheat without any manure what 

 ever, and obtain small crops in consequence. Others, discouraged with their failures to obtain remu 

 nerative crops, have abandoned wheat culture altogether, or greatly reduced the number of acres sown 



The advent of the midge is another reason for the falling oil in the production of wheat in the 

 middle States. This insect, according to the late Dr. Thaddeus W. Harris, first made its appearance 

 in the United States in the nort.hern portion of Vermont, and on the borders of Lower Canada, about 

 the year 1828, though he adds in a foot-note that Mr. Jewitt states that &quot;its first appearance in west 

 ern Vermont occurred in 1820.&quot; From these places its ravages have gradually extended in various 

 directions from year to year. In 1834 it appeared in Maine, which State it traversed in an easterly 

 course at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a year. Dr. Fitch, the able entomologist to the New York 

 State Agricultural Society, in his sixth report on the &quot;noxious and other insects of the State of New 

 York,&quot; gives a most interesting and instructive account of the habits and ravages of this the greatest 

 of all the pests which has infested the wheat-crop. He thinks that this insect was originally brought 

 from Great Britain to Quebec when lying in its larvae state in some unthrashcd whear, and that it 

 extended itself from thence along the St. Lawrence and Chambly (Sorel) rivers, and thus readied 

 Vermont. All accounts agree in representing it as having overspread the surrounding country from the 

 northwestern portion of Vermont. 



In Washington county, New Y ork, the larvae, or little yellow worms of this insect, were found in 

 the wheat in 1830, and in 1832 they had so multiplied as to completely destroy the crop in many fields. 

 Previous to the arrival of this insect a considerable quantity of wheat was annually sent to market from 

 that county, but at no time since (I860) has it been able to grow more than a small fraction of the 

 amount needed for its own consumption. 



Two years later the midge was progressing on its way south, through the adjoining counties of 

 Rensselaer and Saratoga, devastating the wheat-fields in the same manner as in Washington county. 



In Ib34, the midge having advanced eastward across Vermont ami New Hampshire, began to 

 show itself in the State of Maine; and in the opposite direction it had become so numerous around 

 Montreal as to seriously injure the crop. 



In 1835 and 1836, over all the territory to which it had extended, and where wheat continued to be 

 sown, it was so extremely destructive that further attempts to cultivate this grain were abandoned. 



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