PRACTICAL PAPERS—WHEAT CULTURE. 
243 
where. The known conditions of these exceptional results, 
together with like results of recent special experiments, par¬ 
ticularly in England, conclusively show the causes of the di¬ 
minished yield of this great cereal crop. 
These causes I shall now proceed to set forth, as briefly and 
clearly as possible, and to support them by proofs from vari¬ 
ous sources. 
Wheat is a peculiar plant and requires peculiar conditions 
of soil and care. As in its fruit it is superior to all other 
grains, so in its habits it is more particular and exacting than 
others. It cannot endure conditions in which corn or oats 
would flourish. It requires a rich, mellow, and clean soil. 
The richness, too, must be a refined one. Rank manures upon 
which corn would luxuriate are distasteful to this grain. It 
flourishes upon new land, richly endowed with the organic 
matter which nature has furnished from annual generations of 
decayed leaves and grass. When such virgin soil is given, it 
yields a return of from 30 to 100 bushels per acre, with very* 
little care on the part of the farmer; and it will for several 
years yield bountiful but slowly decreasing crops, while it is- 
thus feeding upon and exhausting the food which centuries 
have accumulated iD the soil. This explains the once abun¬ 
dant yield in New York, in Ohio, in Illinois, in Wisconsin, in 
California. This explains the present abundant yield in the 
newer portions of the west—in Minnesota, in Nebraska, in 
Oregon, and in Washington Territory. 
Wheat most easily affords the new settler the money he im¬ 
mediately needs. It gives large returns for his labor, and is 
more easily transported and sold than any thing else he can 
raise. So he continues to grow wheat year after year, on the 
same ground, because it pays immediately and largely, and he 
looks not to, or cares not for, the future. He thus perhaps 
obtains from every crop the original cost of his entire farm, 
and when at last the impoverished, foul, and ill-used land can 
no longer return him much for nothing, he pockets $20 an acre 
for what cost him one-tenth the amount, and joyfully departs 
