and comparative Estimate of its Merits. 65 



with other articles of established usage, and with which prac- 

 tice has made us familiar ; such as peas, beans, oats, or barley. 

 Of course with wheat, as an article of growth for flour, it 

 would be idle to waste time in the comparison ; and here I 

 may beg leave to correct an error of opinion which has pre- 

 vailed among many since the introduction of it, as to its appli- 

 cation in America, which is no less gross than to suppose it 

 is the corn which yields the fine flour of that country, — an 

 error so palpable as to require no refutation. It will not be 

 practicable, within the limits of this article, to enter into details 

 sufficiently at large to expose the fallacy of the attempt to 

 substitute it for either of the above crops, as a part of a series 

 in rotation on a farm of any extent ; but it may suffice to show 

 the probable result of it, as a part of a course of culture, as 

 matter of profit, on the premises of its known properties and 

 produce. To take, for instance, one acre on a soil peculiarly 

 adapted to it, a friable loam ; admitting it to give, as an 

 average crop, fifty bushels to the acre, which, at the market 

 price of it (usually in our markets 4s. per bushel), would be 

 10/. per acre. Now, if sown in May, the ground cannot be 

 possibly cleared until November, which in most situations 

 would be too late to get the ground ready for wheat ; conse- 

 quently it must remain idle until March following, if in- 

 tended for oats, or, by a process of winter fallow, for spring 

 wheat or barley, thus consuming eighteen or twenty months 

 for two crops : whereas, if peas were sown in February or 

 March, they will generally be harvested and marketed in July 

 or August following, and the ground sown with turnips, which 

 may be again cleared off in October and November, by which 

 process the land is immediately available for wheat, at all 

 times the staple crop of our farmers. In comparison of value 

 as to produce, compared with peas, maize possesses no ad- 

 vantage; the general produce of grey peas is six or seven 

 quarters the acre, which at 36s. per quarter, will yield more 

 than the Indian corn, and certainly leave the ground in a much 

 better state for the next crop, as it is notorious that maize 

 exhausts the soil, whereas peas and turnips are considered an 

 ameliorating crop. To pursue the comparison with regard to 

 barley, which may be sown in May, harvested in August, and 

 the ground prepared immediately for wheat ; the produce of 

 barley on soils adapted to Indian corn may be taken at an 

 average in good seasons (equally necessary to the perfection 

 of both), at seven quarters per acre, which, at 305. per quar- 

 ter, would yield an equal profit. Beans, for the use of which 

 it may also be substituted as horse food, as with oats, are 

 generally cultivated on soils not at all adapted for the culture 

 Vol. VI. — No. 24. f 



