246 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
This California method of wheat growing is an illustration— 
a somewhat extreme one, but nevertheless a good illustration— 
of that seeking for the largest immediate returnsj and disre¬ 
gard of future consequences, so largely characteristic thus far 
of American farming, and so fatal in its results to continued 
success in raising the cereal under consideration*. 
I shall now proceed to give some proofs of the entire possi¬ 
bility of producing large crops of wheat, in localities where 
the general failure has been marked, by simply restoring 
and following those conditions which rendered wheat culture 
so easy and so profitable in the beginning. These conditions, 
be it remembered, are mainly a properly enriched soil, and a 
cultivation that shall forbid the growth of weeds,—in a 
word, a rich soil and a clean soil. One fact alone, to which I 
have already referred, might be considered as proving conclu¬ 
sively that the yield of wheat in a given locality can be kept 
up to a high standard indefinitely,—the fact that in England 
under a system of superior culture there has been a consider¬ 
able increase in the annual average during the last century— 
nearly twenty-two per cent., it is estimated. This is not at all 
due to superior climate. The climate of no wheat growing 
region in the world is better adapted to secure large crops and 
superior quality, than that of California. The department 
report for 1866 says that: 
“ In tlie earlier years of grain-growing the average product of wheat in 
that state was between sixty and seventy bushels to the acre, in favorable 
seasons. Instances were common where large fields of from sixty to one 
hundred acres, averaged ninety to one hundred bushels, and selected acres 
as high as one hundred and twenty bushels.” 
The climate of France is as well adapted to wheat as is that 
of England, and yet France has reduced her average yield to 
fifteen bushels, while England has increased hers to twenty- 
eight bushels. The cause of this difference is thus explained 
by Commissioner Capron in his report for 1867: 
“ Deep cultivation is a primary necessity to root-culture, which forms 
the basis of English agriculture, and enables the English farmer to pay 
annual rents equivalent to the fee-simple value of our farms. The grow- 
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