304 
On the Farming of the 
period, on an area of one-tbird of the 580,000 acres then under 
the plough, at an average yield of 22 bushels per acre, we shall 
get a total produce of about 4,250,000 bushels per annum ; against 
a produce now, computed in the same manner, with an average 
of 30 bushels per acre, of about 6,800,000 bushels. When, how- 
ever, we take into account that wheat is now being grown upon 
the lighter lands, many of which at the earlier periods of cultiva- 
tion were not considered capable of growing it at all, we may 
fairly estimate the increased produce of wheat now at two- 
thirds more than at the commencement of the present century. 
The increase too in the other corn crops will bear a proportionate 
ratio, or even perhaps somewhat exceeding this. There is also 
a considerable increase of animal food, consequent upon im- 
proved cultivation ; but I do not think that it is to a proportionate 
amount, or that it at all bears such an adequate ratio to the 
improved culture as it ought to do. 
It was not until the cessation of hostilities, and after peace was 
fully established, that men began to turn their attention to those 
domestic improvements which had so long slumbered under the 
accumulation of more pressing demands upon their time and ex- 
ertions for the supply of the immediate wants for home and active 
foreign service, which the great drafts of the more able-bodied 
for our troops had imposed with greater necessity upon civilians 
at home. It was not, I say, until all this had passed, that men 
looked to see what improvement was needed at their own doors ; 
and true as this was of all classes in general, it was, I believe, 
more especially so with respect to the cultivators of the soil. The 
high price of produce at that day was practically no incentive to 
agricultural improvement ; nor was it until, year after year, prices 
gradually re-adjusted themselves to peace rates, that the agricul- 
tural interest, as a body, became sensible that continued profits 
from the land were to be obtained by the additional produce of 
an improved and more economical cultivation, at a lower scale of 
prices. And our daily increasing population from that time has 
shown tJiat to be the only just and proper course. If then the 
experience of the past 30 years has demonstrated the sound policy 
of cultivation keeping something like a proportionate pace with 
the increase of consumers, even when that increase was but, as it 
were, in its infancy ; how much more imperative must it be in 
these days of its maturer strength, when in the solution of this 
horseshoe-nail problem, we are fast approaching the incalculable 
numbers? 
The improvement in cultivation which has been effected within 
the period under review has not been brought about by the 
exclusive exertions of the practical cultivators of the soil. Many 
of the most valuable implements we now possess, and suggestions 
