i)i North- Eastern America. 



19 



There are two additional observations liowever which I will 

 venture to introduce as likely to interest the general reader. 

 They are both in substance somewhat scientific, yet both entirely 

 practical in their bearing. 



First. In speaking of the soils which rest upon the Marcellus 

 shales represented in the above section, I have alluded to the 

 difficulty experienced in keeping them clean, and to their being 

 especially infested with the corn gromwell (Lithospermum 

 arvense), known in North America by the various names of 

 pigeon-weed, red-root, steen-crout, stony-seed, and wheat-thief. 

 In Yates County, in Western New York, a little to the west of 

 the line of section N S, the pigeon-w^eed is described to be so 

 abundant in some places as almost to have ]3ecome the lord of 

 the soil. It was unknown there — as it is said to have been in 

 all this lake country, and on the river flats of the St. Lawrence — 

 thirty years ago. It is supposed to have been an importation 

 from Europe, probably in samples of unclean seed-corn from 

 England, France, or Germany. Now " hundreds of bushels of the 

 seed are purchased at the Yates County oil-mill, and, if it w^ere 

 worth 85. instead of Is. Qd. a bushel, these hundreds would be 

 thousands." * 



My readers will observe in the concluding words of this quo- 

 tation how one evil leads to another. The purchase of this seed 

 at the oil-mills must be mainly for the purpose of adulteration.]* 

 I have examined samples of American linseed cake, in which 

 seeds were to be recognised that I could not name. They 

 might, I then thought, be those of the dodder — a parasite which 

 in this country infests the flax-plant in some localities — but they 

 might also be other cheap seeds purposely mixed wdth the lin- 

 seed. To persons who are in the habit of buying the cheaper 

 varieties of American cake this point may not be unworthy of 

 attention ; and as oil-cakes are chiefly bought by farmers, some 

 may regard it as a kind of poetical justice, that the idle farmers 

 m one country should be the means of punishing the less dis- 

 cerning of their own class in another. 



^ Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society, 1846, p. 436. 



t In the Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society for 1850, 

 p. 512, I find it stated that this seed yields two or thre^e quarts of oil from a bushel 

 of seed. As a gallon of such oil weighs about 7^ lbs., we may take/owr pouuds as 

 the average yield of this seed per bushel. But linseed of 52 lbs. a bnshel yields 

 17 lbs. of oil ; and the best rape of 56 lbs, yields 16 lbs, a bushel. Supposing the 

 gromwell seed to be about 50 lbs, weight per bushel, 4 lbs. of oil woiild barely 

 pay the cost of expressing, were it not for the value of the cake. English crushers 

 reckon that, for an additional shilling in the price of linseed per quarter, about 

 3 lbs. more of oil should be yielded, so that in their reckonius:, Is. 6d., the price of 

 the gromAvell seed, would require 4^ lbs. of oil to pay the cost of the seed alone. 

 The value of the cake therefore, as I have said in the text, must be what the 

 1 ates County crushers mainly look to. ' 



c 2 



