in North- Eastern America. 



13 



culture, and comfortable houses and good buildings of other kinds 

 were seen on most of the farms I passed. The size of farms is 

 here generally from 100 to 300 acres, and these, with the build- 

 ings upon them, usually sell at 50 to 60 dollars an acre. At this 

 price Mr. Geddes expressed to me his opinion that it was the 

 cheapest land in the States ^br those who have capital to buy it. 

 By those, of course, whose whole wealth consists in their bodily 

 strength and industrious habits, the wilderness land of the more 

 western regions is alone attainable. 



I give, as an illustration of the capability of this very best 

 land, the following statement of the produce per acre, as fur- 

 nished to me by Mr. Geddes. This soil is of a very useful kind, 

 producing all sorts of grain crops, though not of equal quality. 

 The yield per acre is, — 



Wheat . . 18to 35 bushels, of 60 lbs. 



Barley . . 20 to 55 „ 48 lbs. 



: Oats . . . 40 to 100 „ 32 lbs. 



Indian corn . . 50 to SO „ 56 to 60 lbs. • 



Potatoes . . 100 to 300 bushels. 



It is least adapted, he said, to the growth of potatoes — which 

 is more probably owing to the climate and the great summer 

 heats than to any defect in the soil. Turnips are as yet but 

 little grown, and the feeding of stock is not much attended to.* 

 An average weight of 32 lbs. a bushel does not indicate a climate 

 well suited to the oat crop. As a general rule indeed the climate 

 which ripens Indian corn well rarely produces a crop of heavy 

 oats. 



The fact that this land has been ploughed for fifty successive 

 years without receiving any manure will give the reader an idea 

 of its innate richness. I walked with Mr. Geddes over two 

 fields which have never been manured during the fifty years 

 which have elapsed since his father first cleared them, and he 

 thinks the land as good as ever it was. It yields from 50 to 60 

 bushels of Indian corn, and in 1848 it gave 30 bushels an acre 

 of wheat. The soil consists, for the most part, of crumbling 

 fragments of the green shale. When the older land appears to 

 become exhausted the plough is put in a little deeper, so as to 

 bring up a little of the crumbling rock (green shale). It is then 

 said to produce wheat as abundantly as before. 



The most sceptical as to the influence of geological structure 

 upon agricultural capability can scarcely doubt after such an 

 illustration as this. 



The rotation on this farm was — 1. Indian corn after lea, with 



* When the necessity for manure becomes more urgent to the land, the feeding 

 of stock Avill no doubt take in American the same place it occupies in English 

 agriculture. 



