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THE ILLINOIS FARMER. 



361 



Western Agriculture. 

 We have been interested in reading 

 the address of Hon. John A. Dix at 

 the recent State Fair, in New York. 

 This address is eminently practical. In 

 one portion of it he alludes to the ex- 

 hausting process of agriculture in the 

 Eastern States, by which the soil be- 

 comes too poor to yield remuneratory 

 crops. He says the same process of ex- 

 hausting is going on on the prairies of 



Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. We quote 

 from the address : 



''I was last spring in a city of one 

 of these States, on the Mississippi, and 

 found the inhabitants throwing their ma- 

 nure into the river. I inquired the cause 

 of this extraordinary practice, and was 

 told in reply, that their lands were nat- 

 urally fertile enough without artificial 

 aid. A few years will bring with them, 

 as time has everywhere else, the penal- 

 ties of wastefulness, in diminished crops 

 and lighter grains. The annual loss in 

 the United States, from the abuse of 

 the soil, is to be computed not by mil- 

 lions of dollars, but by hundreds of mil- 

 lions. We know of statistical facts that 

 the average production per acre has 

 greatly diminished. In this State, less 

 than a century ago, the average wheat 

 crop was over twenty-five bushels per 

 acre. It is now about twelve. In Ohio, 

 one of the most fertile States in the Un- 

 ion, and but little more than half a cen- 

 tury old, the average is about the same 

 in New York. The virgin soil is al- 

 ready half worn out. In some of the 

 Southern States the deterioration has 

 been more rapid, and the average pro- 

 duction is still less. These are the le- 

 gitimate fruits of careless systems of 

 husbandry. They are not merely care- 

 less — they are systems of the most 

 wasteful and culpable extravagance. 

 The man who extracts from his land all 

 it is capable of producing, without giv- 

 ing back to it an equivalent in fertiliz- 

 ing substances, is in fact selling his 

 farm in his crops. It is precisely the 

 system of the prodigal, who spends his 

 money capital, instead of living by a 

 prudent economy on the interest. It 

 was the same system of spoliation which 

 exhausted the grain fields of Imperial 

 Rome. Cato, mo-e than two thousand 

 years ago, and Columella, Varro and 

 Virgil, at a later day, wrote learnedly, 

 and some of them gracefully, on the sub- 

 ject of agriculture. They laid down the 

 most unexceptionable rules in regard to 

 rotation of crops, the cultivation of 

 plants, the treatment of the soil, and all 

 the leading subjects of practical hus- 

 bandry. But the agriculture of Rome 

 died out under their precepts, and the 

 desolation of the campagna, once the 

 prolific mother of nations, and now to a 



great extent overrun with noxious vege- 

 tation, and made uninhabitable by pes- 

 tilental exhalations, attests the insuffi- 

 ciency of their systems. The Maremraa, 

 in ancient Etruria, was exhausted by the 

 same process of spoliation ; it became 

 nearly uninhabitable, and, like the Cam- 

 pagna, exhaled an atmosphere of pesti- 

 lence and death. But by the persever- 

 ing efibrts of Leopold the First, of Tus- 

 cany, against great physical impedi- 

 ments, a large portion of it has been re- 

 claimed and made healthful and produt- 

 The ancients labored under disad- 



ive 



vantages, which time had removed. — 

 They had no knowledge of the natural 

 sciences, which are the offspring almost 

 of our generation. Analytical chemist- 

 ry has taught us the component parts of 

 the soil, and of the plants and grams 

 which It produces. We know precisely 

 the amount of each organic and inorgan- 

 ic element, which is lost to the earth in 

 bringing a certain quntity of grain to 

 perfection. We know that unless these 

 elements are restored, the earth is rob- 

 bed of so much of its vegetative power, 

 and gradually becomes worn out and 

 unproductive. 



I have dwelt upon this subject, gen- 

 tlemen, because it is the great danger 

 which threatens our agriculture, and 

 which we must guard against by timely 

 reform, if we would fulfill our destined 

 work of supplying the increasing wants 

 of the Eastern hemisphere. I desire to 

 give it prominence, because I believe 

 there has been no instance in the history 

 of our race in which the fertility of the 

 earth has been so rapidly wasted. It 

 would have been otherwise, no doubt, if 

 we had not been able to resort to bound- 

 less tracts of fertile land in the West, 

 which were open to emigrants at prices 

 almost nominal. It was thought easier 

 to wear out old lands and remove to 

 new, than it was to keep up the fertility 

 of the old by manuring. It was a fatal 

 error, as the condition of our agricul- 

 ture will show. But for the extraordi- 

 nary productiveness of the Western 

 States and Tei-ritories, the old States 

 would, at this very moment, have been 

 dependent on other countries for this 

 supplies of food. The remedy for all 

 this evil is in our hands. It is to re- 

 store to our lands, by manuring, what 

 we take from them in crops. We all 

 know that this process of restoration 

 has been going on for nearly a quarter 

 of a century in Virginia, and that lands 

 which had been worn out by successive 

 crops of tobacco, corn and wheat, have 

 been reclaimed and made to produce 

 abundantly. It added in value to the 

 agricultural capital of that State, in 

 twelve years from the commencement of 

 this process of reform. The same re- 

 sults would follow the same measures in 

 all cases in which the power of the soil 



have been overtasked ; and it is not 

 doubted by those who have closely in- 

 vestigated" the subject, that the crop of 

 Indian corn might be trebled without 

 enlarging the surface on which it is now 

 cultivated, and that millions of dollars 

 might be added to the annual value of 

 that crop alone. Nor can it be doubted 

 that the production of the other great 

 staple articles of food might be aug- 

 mented in a like proportion, increasing 

 enormously the wealth of the country, 

 and furnishing larger surpluses for ex- 

 portation." u - , 



We do not intend to controvert these 

 statements. It is a manifest truth that 

 our prairie lands do not yield more than 

 three heavy crops of wheat in success- 

 ion. True, in some case, this remark 

 may not be entirely correct ; but there 

 are more failures than auccesses after 

 growing wheat upon land a few years. 

 Corn, however, upon our heavy prairies 

 can be made to produce heavy crops, 

 for years, we do not know how many, if 

 properly cultivated. That quality of 

 the soil which makes wheat seem to be 

 soon exhausted. That it can be restored 

 we have no doubt ; a rotation of crops 

 and the cultivation of grasses will do 

 this. And if these precautions are not 

 used, we shall soon on our cultivated 

 land find that our wheat crops are less- 

 ening, as years past, in the same man- 

 ner as they have done in more Eastern 

 States. We have noble soil; but it ought 

 to receive the tender care of those who 

 cultivate them. Cultivate well — return 

 to the soil as you take from it — and the 

 rich possessions which we now have, will 

 go down to future generations, in all 

 their present natural fertility. True it 

 is, that the people of this country are 

 wasting millions of wealth, year by 

 year, which will entail want and poverty 

 on the people who are to come aft-er 

 them. 



Old Times. 

 The habits of the ladies have changed 

 wonderfully, since the days of the wife of 

 Gen. Washington. She was a lady in every 

 sense of that phrase ; and especially was she 

 the model of a lady in her management of her 

 household affairs. On one occasion, she was 

 called upon by Mrs. Troupe, the accomplish- 

 ed wife of a British naval officer, of high 

 grade. The lady gave the following ac- 

 count of the visit. 



"Well, I honestly tell you, I never was so 



ashamed in all my Ufe, Madame and 



Madame , and myself, thought we 



