INTRODUCTION. xxxv 



destructive in 1855 and 185G, that the members of agricultural societies held meetings to discuss the 

 propriety of abandoning wheat culture. Spring crops and winter barley took the place of wheat, and 

 many farmers who formerly produced a large quantity of wheat, raised little more than enough for their 

 own consumption. There can be no doubt that farmers in this justly celebrated wheat section had 

 been in the habit of sowing too mucli of their land to this grain. It was not uncommon to grow wheat 

 every other year on the same land. The result was, as might have been foreseen, the land soon lost 

 its primitive fertility, and became comparatively impoverished. Large crops of clover were grown by 

 the aid of gypsum, (sulphate of lime,) and ploughed under as a manure for the wheat crop, and this in 

 a measure restored the fertility of the soil. There can be little doubt, however, that ploughing under 

 such large crops of clover for so many years increased to a deleterious degree the amount of carbo 

 naceous matter in the soil, and this, as is well known, has a tendency to retard the ripening of the crop, 

 as well as to increase to an injurious extent the growth of straw. 



When the midge made its appearance, it found everything in the most favorable condition for its 

 rapid propagation. The wheat-growers were entirely unprepared for such an enemy, and it swept 

 through the country like an epidemic. 



No wonder there was a wide-spread conviction that wheat culture must be abandoned. They 

 knew little of the habits of this minute insect, and were unable to oflcr it any resistance. 



The midge was, however, no new thing. It had been known in England for a century, and had 

 at different periods proved very destructive. Farmers there, however, did not abandon wheat culture^ 

 neither will they do so in this country. They can, with proper care, raise wheat even in seasons when 

 the midge would otherwise prove most destructive. 



How are the, ravages of the midge to be avoided! The means necessary to avoid the ravages of 

 the wheat-midge are in themselves very simple, and yet they embrace every process of our agriculture. 



Wheat is the most profitable of all our ordinary crops, provided the land and climate are suitable, 

 and the yield good. 



It should be the aim of the wheat-grower so to conduct all his operations that they shall tend to 

 enrich and prepare his land for the production of the crop. His system of rotation, of feeding stock, 

 and manuring, should have primary reference to this grain. The great error in American agriculture 

 has been the seeding of too much land in wheat, the result of which practice is seen in small and 

 diminishing crops. The time has come when we can no longer sow wheat on the same land every 

 other year with success. 



The wheat-grower will appreciate the necessity of introducing other crops for the purpose of 

 preparing and enriching his land, and on fewer acres, to obtain a greater product. 



The two substances most likely to be deficient in the majority of soils for the growth of wheat 

 are ammonia and phosphoric acid. 



From the fact that about one-half of the ash of wheat, barley, oats, rye, and Indian corn consists of 

 phosphoric acid, it is usual to speak of the cereals as particularly exhaustive of the phosphoric acid in 

 the soil ; and it is undoubtedly true that the growth and exportation of cereals from the farm tend very 

 materially to impoverish the soil of phosphoric acid. But it does not follow from this, that when a 

 soil falls off in its capacity to produce the cereals, it is otoing, necessarily, to a deficiency of phosphoric 

 acid. We believe, in fact, that, with the exception, perhaps, of some portions of the grain-growing 

 districts of the south, this is seldom the case. It has been clearly proved that a soil requires more 

 available phosphoric acid to produce an average crop of turnips than to produce an average crop of 

 wheat. The same, it is believed, is true of clover, beans, peas, vetches, and probably other leguminous 

 plants So that it follows, that so long as a soil produces good crops of clover, or peas, or beans, there 

 is no deficiency of phosphoric acid in the soil, so far, at least, as the production of the cereals is concerned. 



When by a continued course of cropping with the cereals the phosphoric acid becomes deficient 

 not exhausted the crops of clover and other leguminous plants will first fall ofF; and if the farmer, 

 after this, goes on impoverishing his soil by sowing the cereals, he must be content to do it with very 



