264 [Senate 
35,000 souls, and an area of 700 square miles, of which nearly 500 
are cleared and improved. 
Lest this statement should be deemed extravagant by the reader, I 
will adduce the data on which it is founded. When it is considered 
that the entire crop of 1832 was almost totally destroyed—that the crop 
of the previous year was much injured, and that for several of the sub¬ 
sequent years the man was deemed fortunate who received but half of 
a fair yield per acre—many obtaining back but little more than the 
amount of seed which they committed to the ground. I say, when 
these facts are duly considered, I think it will be regarded as but a 
moderate estimate if we set down the total amount of loss during the 
fourteen past years, as equal to the entire crops of three years, under 
ordinary circumstances. Had the usual quantity of land been all along 
sowed with wheat, the loss would doubtless have been double that 
which we here are supposing it to have been. What, then, was the 
amount of the ordinary wheat crops in this country, formerly 1 No 
statistics, that I am aware, were then taken, by which this point can be 
definitely ascertained. But in 1844—the crop of which year is com¬ 
monly supposed to have been about a third or a fourth less than what 
was requited for the consumption of the country—according to the 
census returns, 75,500 bushels were produced. 
Now, since the county formerly not only supplied its own wants, but 
transmitted a considerable surplus annually to market, it is probable 
that the yearly crop previous to the appearance of the wheat-fly, was 
twice or thrice what it amounted to in 1844, which would be from 150 
to 200,000 bushels, the value of which for three years, gives us the 
sum first stated, half a million of dollars. And this estimate, be it 
observed, only contemplates the grain that has been destroyed, without 
taking into consideration the detriment that has been indirectly 
sustained by our farmers in being driven to a cultivation of those 
coarser grains which have yielded them a much less profit. 
The adjoining counties of Rensselaer and Saratoga, and the five 
western counties of Vermont, constituting the district over which this 
fly first swept and where perhaps its ravages have been most severe, 
have probably suffered in about an equal degree with Washington 
county. Together they embrace an area about six times greater than 
that of Washington county. The whole of this district is therefore 
about equal in extent to the State of Connecticut, and the amount of 
