THE WHEAT CULTUEIST. 



73 



this has been done, too, when I Icnew that their fields 

 never produced more than about one-half the reported 

 quantity. I have known farmers, who had gained a 

 great reputation for raising excellent wheat, write to 

 editors of their county papers or to certain agricultural 

 journals that their crop would yield so many bushels of 

 grain — an enormous product — when their neighbors 

 knew that they did not raise a greater number of bush- 

 els per acre than were produced on other farms. 



I once purchased a quantity of seed rye of a distant 

 neighbor, who published that his rye yielded sixty bush- 

 els of superior grain per acre ; and I learned the next 

 season that, to all appearance, his yield of rye was no 

 larger than my own, which was less than twenty-five 

 bushels per acre. Only a few days ago, I read of a 

 farmer wiio raised seventy-two bushels of excellent wheat 

 per acre. But I never could credit the statement. Men 

 sometimes count the heads of wheat that grew on one 

 foot square of very fertile ground, weigh the grain, and 

 make an estimate how many bushels will grow on one 

 acre. But the true way is to harvest, thrash, and weigh 

 the grain that actually grew on one acre. 



It would seem, that if a farmer can raise a given quan- 

 tity of wheat on one foot square, he could produce a 

 yield proportionately large on one acre. But let us have 

 the exact weight of grain that was actually produced on 

 one acre. These airy estimates of a large yield, which 

 are got up for some pecuniary efi^ect, are not the true 

 motive to induce farmers to cultivate their ground in a 

 more thorough manner. 



I have in mind a farmer, who stated positively and 

 unqualifiedly, that he was raising cabbages on his farm 

 at the rate of 10,890 per acre. He said he had less than 



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