MERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
245 
THE GREATEST GRAIN PORT IN THE WORLD. 
In the progress of our city and of the west 
generally, facts of the most astounding 
character not unfrequently come upon us 
unawares, and before we are prepared for 
them. If any one had asked us two days 
ago which of the great grain depots of the 
word, (depots at which grain is collected di¬ 
rectly from the producer,) was the largest, 
we probably would have named half-a-dozen 
before hitting upon the right one. Our atten¬ 
tion was called to this subject yesterday by a 
gentleman engaged in the grain business in 
this city, and with his assistance, we have 
given it a thorough investigation, the result 
which, greatly to our surprise and gratifica¬ 
tion, establishes the supremacy of Chicago 
as a grain port over all the other ports in the 
world ! That there may be no ground for 
incredulity, we proceed to lay before our 
readers the statistics, gleaned from authen¬ 
tic sources, which confirm this statement. 
In the table which follows we have in all cases 
reduced flour to its equivalent in wheat, 
estimating five bushels of the latter to one of 
the former. The exports from the Euro¬ 
pean ports are an average for a series of 
years—those of St. Louis for the year 1853, 
those of Chicago and Milwaukee, for the 
current year, and those of New-York for the 
past eleven months of the same year. With 
these explainations we invite attention to the 
following table : 
Wheat. Ind. Corn. Oats, Rye Total, 
bush. bush. & Barley, bush. 
Odessa.5,600,000 . 1,440,000 7,040,000 
GalatZ & Ibrelia. .2,400,009 5,600,000 320,000 8,320,000 
Dantzig.3,080,000 . 1,328,000 4,408,000 
St. Petersberg.all kinds.7,200,000 
Archangel.all kinds.2,528,900 
Riga.all kinds.4,uu0,000 
St. Louis.3,082,000 918,358 1,081,078 5,081,468 
Milwaukee . 2,723,574 182,937 941,650 3,747,161 
New-York.4,802,452 3,627,883 . 9,430,335 
Chicago.2,946,924 6,745,588 4,024,216 13,726,728 
By comparing the exports of the different 
places mentioned in the above table, it will 
be seen that the 'grain exports of Chicago 
exceed those of New-York by 4,296,393 
bushels, those of St. Louis by more than 
two hundred and fifty per cent—those of 
Milwaukee nearly four hundred per cent. 
Turning to the great granaries of Europe, 
Chicago nearly doubles St. Petersburg, the 
largest, and exceeds Galatz and Ibrelia, com¬ 
bined, 5,406,727 bushels. 
Twenty years ago Chicago, as well as 
most of the country from whence she now 
draws her immense supplies of bread-stuffs, 
imported both flour and meat for home con¬ 
sumption—now, she is the largest primary 
grain depot in the world, and she leads all 
other ports of the world, also, in the quan¬ 
tity and quality of her beef exports! We 
say largest primary grain depot in the world, 
because it can not be denied that New-York, 
Liverpool, and some other great commercial 
centers, receive more breadstuff's than Chi¬ 
cago does in the course of the year, but none 
of them will compare with her, as we have 
shown above, in the amount collected from 
the hands of the producers. [Chicago Press. 
A Big Egg.— At a recent sitting of the 
Paris Academy of Science, Mr. Geoffroy St. 
Hilaire gave an account of some portions of 
an egg of the Epyornis, the gigantic and very 
rare bird of Madagascar, which have recently 
been conveyed to France. These portions 
show, he stated, the egg to have been of 
such a size as to be capable of containing 
about, ten English quarts. The egg was 
considerably larger than that which now ex¬ 
ists in the Museum of the Jardindes Plantes, 
and which can only contain about eight and 
three-fourth quarts. The learned naturalist 
also gave an account of his examination of 
some bones of the bird, which had been pre¬ 
sented to him; but some of them he was 
obliged to reject as doubtful, and others were 
not sufficiently numerous to enable him to 
state precisely the conformation of the bird ; 
they, however, showed that it differs con¬ 
siderably from the ostrich. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
CORN ON GRASS LANDS, ETC. 
In your issue of December 13th, instant, 
some practical suggestions are given by a 
correspondent in relation to growing corn on 
old grass lands. The plowing of such lands 
in the autumn or beginning of winter I have 
practised with success. Old grass leys in 
this region, after having been used as mead¬ 
ows for several years, are apt to become 
grubby. Frosty nights, generally following 
after plowing in mild days in December, ar¬ 
rest the retreat of the grubs and destroy 
them, an advantage which your correspond¬ 
ent does not enumerate. His mode of ap¬ 
plying manure and its supposed advantages, 
does not so well accord with my experience, 
which, in growing corn, has fully confirmed 
me in the theory advanced by the late Judge 
Buel. All the coarse, unfermented manure 
from my yards is plowed deep under the 
sward. After such treatment I can safely 
apply a “shovel full” of suitable manure in 
the hill. Without this dressing upon the 
sward the crop, on most of our lands, 
would be injured by so large an application 
of manure in the hill. 
I have seen frequent instances of disap¬ 
pointment among farmers here, by manuring 
as your correspondent recommends, the 
crop giving great promise in the early part of 
the season, but failing just at the period 
when the earing process commenced. Spe¬ 
cial manures, in such cases, may be applied 
to the surface in time to remedy the diffi¬ 
culty ; but this is often deferred until too 
late. By applying less than 45 loads of 
manure broadcast, and plowing it under the 
sand, manuring slightly in the hill, and ap¬ 
plying two or three fish to each, after the 
first hoeing, we have succeeded in growing 
on our gravelly soil 90 bushels of corn per 
acre. 
In making the above remarks it should be 
remembered that the condition and nature of 
the soil must, in a very considerable degree, 
qualify and limit their application. In this 
locality meadows after being mowed five or 
six years and depastured more or less, being 
broken up, require a very liberal manuring to 
produce well afterwards. 
A word more about corn. In your re¬ 
marks on the effects of the drouth, August 
23, page 376, you state that “ When corn has 
become so well grown as to shade the 
ground on which it is growing, it suffers less 
in drouth than any other crop.” My experi¬ 
ence has led me to an opposite conclusion. 
In a course of thirty years’ practice, I have 
never known a drouth to be otherwise than 
destructive to the corn crop, when it com¬ 
menced early enough to be severe at that 
particular stage of advancement which 
you speak of. On the contrary, here corn 
has often been so retarded and pinched by 
early and long continued drouth as to make 
the farmer despair of his crop ; and yet at a 
very advanced season, the stalks being still 
small and dwarfish, and the earing but just 
commenced, a heavy rain had often sur¬ 
prised the cultivator by its renovating effects 
in producing nearly an average yield. Not 
so this year. Our corn fields showed well 
grown stalks at the usual season, and yet 
they will not average half the usual crop, in 
consequence of the drouth. The best remedy, 
could we anticipate such seasons, would be 
thin planting, by having more width between 
the rows, or fewer stalks in the hill, without 
regard to the question of shade—the degree 
of moisture carried off by the leaves being 
of much more consequence. 
RICHARD M. CONKLIN. 
Cold Spring Harbor, L. I., Dec. 21,1854 
TO KEEP SILK. 
Silk articles should not be kept folded in 
white paper, as the chloride of lime used in 
bleaching the paper will probably impair the 
color of the silk. Brown or blue paper is 
better ; the yellowish, smooth, Indian paper 
is best of all. Silk intended for dress should 
not be kept long in the house before it is 
made up, as lying in the folds will have a 
tendency to impair its durability by causing 
it to cut or split, particularly if the silk has 
been thicked by gum. 
Thread lace veils are very easily cut; 
satin and velvet being soft are not easily 
cut, but dresses of velvet should not be laid 
by with any weight above them. If the knap 
of thin velvet is laid down, it is not possible 
to raise it up again. Hard silk should never 
be wrinkled, because the thread is easily 
broken in the crease , and it never can be 
rectified. The way to take the wrinkles out. 
of silk scarfs or handkerchiefs, is to moisten 
the surface evenly with a sponge and some 
weak glue, and then pin the silk with some 
toilet pins around the shelves on a mattrass 
or feather bed, taking pains to draw out the 
silk as tight as possible. When dry the 
wrinkles will have disappeared. The reason 
of this is obvious to every person. It is 
a nice job to.jdress light colored silk, and 
few should try it. Some silk articles should 
be moistened with weak glue or gum-water, 
and the wrinkles ironed out by a hot flat¬ 
iron on the wrong side. 
Scientific American. 
The Bridge across the Niagara. —It is 
calculated that the suspension bridge at Ni¬ 
agara Falls will be finished by the first of 
January next. The following dimensions 
will give an idea of the magnitude and 
strength of this incomparable bridge : 
Length of distance from the center of the 
towers, 822 feet; height of the towers 
above the rocks on the New-York side, 80 
feet; on the Canada side 37 feet; height to 
the railroad track, 60 feet; height of the 
track above the water, 260 feet; number of 
wire cables, four feet; diameter of cables, 
10 inches, number of strands of No. 9 wire 
in cable, 3,659 inches; total power of the 
cables, 12,400 tons ; weight of the entire 
bridge, 750 tons ; weight of the bridge and 
of the heaviest load that can be put on it, 
1,250 tons ; greatest weight which the ca¬ 
bles and supports can bear, 7,300 tons. 
Singular Circumstance. —A cow was 
slaughtered on Saturday, Dec. 2d, on the 
farm of Andrew McMurray, in Byram, and 
imbedded in her heart was found a cut nail, 
over two inches long. The heart appeared 
to be considerably decayed in consequence. 
The animal to appearance had always been 
healthy. [Sussex Herald. 
Lost Time. —Some Yankee makes the fol¬ 
lowing ingenious calculation: 
“ It is a singular fact, that if a man travel 
round the earth in an eastwardly direction, 
he will find, on returning to the place of de¬ 
parture, he has gained one whole day; the 
reverse of this proposition being true also, it 
follows that the Yankees who are always 
traveling to the west., do not live as long by 
a day or two, as they would if they had 
staid at home ; and supposing each Yankee’s 
time to be worth $1 50 per day, it maybe 
easily shown that a considerable amount of 
money is annually lost by their roving dis¬ 
position.” 
