110 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
DR. LEE’S REPORT. 
In the Assembly of this State, on the 7th ult., Dr. Lee, 
chairman of the committee on agriculture, to whom was 
referred so much of the Governor’s message as relates to 
agriculture, and also the annual report of the New-York 
State Agricultural Society, embracing returns from forty- 
six counties, submitted the following report: 
So far as your committee have been able to examine 
the manuscript essays and official reports made by the 
State and County Societies, they appear to be drawn up in 
strict conformity to existing laws, and therefore your 
committee do not feel at liberty to alter or abridge them 
in any respect. Taken as a whole, these documents con¬ 
tain a large amount of information of great practical va¬ 
lue to the farming interest of the State. The Treatise of 
Mr. Gaylord on Insects Injurious to Field Crops, &c.; the 
Essay on the Introduction of New Agricultural Products, 
and on the Importance of the Geological Survey in its 
connexion with Practical Husbandry, &c., are worth 
many times the cost of publishing all the reports. Hith¬ 
erto it has been customary to print ten times the usual 
number for the use of members of the Legislature and 
State Officers, 500 copies for the use of the State Agricul¬ 
tural Society, and 20 copies for each of the county socie¬ 
ties. Believing that these documents will compare fa¬ 
vorably with any that have preceded them from the same 
source, and are well calculated to render the agricultural 
labor of this great State more productive to the commu¬ 
nity at large, as well as more profitable to the cultivators 
of the earth, your committee do not hesitate to recom¬ 
mend the printing of the number of copies above named. 
In his late message, the Governor says: “ The number 
of acres of land charged with taxes in 1842, was 27,176,- 
934, valued at $504,254,029.” According to the State 
census of 1825, the number of acres under cultivation was 
7,160,967. The same authority in 1835, gives the num¬ 
ber at 9,656,426. At this time the number of acres under 
cultivation, probably does not vary much from 11,000,- 
000. According to the U. S. census of 1840, the number 
of persons actually employed in rural pursuits, was 445,- 
954; while the whole number actually engaged in man¬ 
ufactures, the mechanical arts, trade, internal, coasting 
and foreign commerce, was 207,172. These brief statis¬ 
tics demonstrate the important truth that agriculture is the 
great productive interest of the State of New-York. 
Your committee deem it not out of place to inquire 
whether the half million of laboring people, who culti¬ 
vate eleven millions of acres of fair farming lands, do 
now realize as large a return for their capital and indus¬ 
try, as is practicable? 
In the returns of the census of 1840, the wheat grown 
in this State, (12,286,418 bushels,) was estimated at $1,20 
per bushel; corn (10,972,286 bushels,) at 75 cents; oats 
(20,675,847 bushels,) at 44 cents; and hay (3,127,047 
tons,) at $10 per ton. At these prices, which are now 
too high by one-third, the aggregate products of all our 
rural industry were valued at $109,071,416. Reduce this 
gross sum to $77,000,000, as it ought to be, and divide 
that by 11,000,000, the number of acres in* cultivation, 
and the average crop was worth only seven dollars per 
acre. 
From considerable experience, much study and reflec¬ 
tion, your committee are of the opinion that the 11,000,- 
000 acres of cultivated lands in this State, might be made 
to yield, without any additional expense, an average of $3 
per acre more of the valuable fruits of the earth , than they 
now do. In other words, the same labor, which is now 
measurably lost through ignorance of the laws of na¬ 
ture, through inattention to the constituent elements of 
all cultivated plants, and of the affinities that govern their 
chemical and organic combinations in practical agricul¬ 
ture, might, by the aid of plain and available science, se¬ 
cure to our farmers ten dollars worth of agricultural pro¬ 
ducts, where they now get but seven dollars worth. For 
what purpose does the husbandman toil so hard through¬ 
out the year? Is it not to transform certain elements of 
earth, air and water, into cultivated plants; and these 
again, into domestic animals, beef, pork, mutton, butter, 
cheese and wool? And what are these elements of earth, 
air and water, which the well or ill applied labor of the 
farmer changes into wheat and other grain, into grass and 
roots? Where is the practical agriculturist to find the 
raw material of one good ripe wheat plant; and how must 
the necessary ingredients be combined and applied to the 
soil, so as to realize the largest crop at the least expense? 
To say nothing of the gaseous and earthy elements ne¬ 
cessary to make good firm wheat straw, we now take 
over 12,000,000 bushels of the raw material of wheat 
bread from our fields every year, and never stop to in¬ 
quire whether this system of culture will or will not rob 
our wheat lands of all their bread-bearing elements. Not 
one particle in a thousand of the elements of bread, after 
entering human mouths, ever finds its way back again on 
to the field from whence it was taken. If we are certain 
that the benevolent Author of our being will create anew , 
annually, 12,000,000 bushels of those particular ingredi¬ 
ents which make that amount of wheat, and will keep 
good all the elements of straw not returned after the har¬ 
vest, then perhaps our fields may not suffer by continuous 
cropping without renovation. But Heaven will not cre¬ 
ate one particle of matter for our especial benefit, though 
the two and a half millions of people in New-York shall 
waste the raw material of 50,000,000 bushels of grain 
every year, until they shall have no more to waste. 
To prevent farther loss, and regain all the fertilizing 
elements taken from our cultivated lands since their first 
settlement, are objects of great public importance. Man 
is indebted to agricultural science for the invaluable dis¬ 
covery that not far from 97 per cent of all the elements 
of cultivated plants exist in the air in exhaustless quanti¬ 
ties. These are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, 
the two latter forming water. The combustion of wood 
and coal, the respiration of all animals, fermentation and 
the decomposition of all organic matter throw into the 
atmosphere a vast amount of the ingredients necessary 
for the re-construction of vegetables and animals. To 
say nothing of water and its elements, which play an im¬ 
portant part in all organic structures, carbon is the largest 
and most expensive element in the production of plants 
and domestic animals. It is the basis of vegetable mold 
—“ the fat of the land”—and combined with the constit¬ 
uents of water, forms veritable fat and butter. It is some 
consolation to know that there are no less than seven tons 
of pure carbon diffused through the air over every acre 
of land, whether barren or fertile, upon the habitable 
globe. 
The earthy part of the wheat plant forming less than 3 
per cent of its solid substance, consists of silica, (flint,) 
lime, potash, soda, magnesia, alumina, (the basis of clay,) 
chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, and a trace of iron. All 
these minerals are indispensable to the production of one 
good wheat plant. Hence, if a farmer had an abundance 
of all the other elements in his field to grow forty bush¬ 
els of wheat on an acre, and it should be destitute of 
phosphorus, that defect would be fatal to the crop. 
There is good reason to believe that if a practical wheat 
grower will restore to his field every year all the raw 
material of that bread-bearing plant, a large crop can be 
harvested from the same soil year after year, as well as 
to let it lie idle, or to cultivate other grain for three or 
four years and then grow wheat again. Persons unac¬ 
quainted with the very compound nature of wheat, are 
apt to imagine that the application of one fertilizing ele¬ 
ment, lime for instance, ought to suffice to produce a 
good crop. They are ignorant of the fact that every ker¬ 
nel and stem of wheat has twelve other indispensable in¬ 
gredients in its composition. Millions of days of hard la¬ 
bor are annually thrown away in New-York alone, in a 
vain attempt to transmute one mineral into another. Our 
farmers are searching for some strange philosopher’s 
stone that will change lime into potash, potash into mag¬ 
nesia, magnesia into flint, flint into clay, clay into sul¬ 
phur, sulphur into iron, iron into phosphorus, phospho¬ 
rus into nitrogen, nitrogen into carbon and carbon into 
oxygen. When a man can make the half of a thing equal 
to the whole, then he may raise a good crop of wheat 
where his soil lacks one-half of the elements of that 
grain. , 
Your committee believe it practicable to increase the 
I annual products of our present rural industry 33$ pel 
