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12} DIV. INSECTS."*

H«H KEPORT

OF THE

COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS, ,

FOR THE YEAR 1849. i

PART II.

AGRICULTTJEB.

CnnUntsL •

I. — Agricultural Statistics. II. — General View of American Agriculture. III. — Agricultural Meteorology. IV. — Report of Prof. Lewis C. Beck on the Breadstuffs oft

the United States. V. — Reports and Letters relating to Crops, &c. VI. — Miscellaneous Communications. VII. — Analytical Tables. VIII. — Statistical Tables.

n

WASHINGTON:

OFFICE OF PRINTERS TO HOUSE OF REPS.

1850.

CONTENTS.

Paob.

Letter of Commissioner to Speaker of the House of Representatives £

Introductory Remarks, by D. Lee, M. D 6

Agricultural Statistics, byD. Lee, M. D . 14

A General View of American Agriculture, by D. Lee, M. D 22

Agricultural Meteorology, byD. Lee, M. D 38

Second Report on Breadstuff's of the U. States, by Lewis C. Beck, M. D 49

Letters and Reports relating to Crops. . 83

Essay on Grasses for the South, by Thomas Affleck, Esq . 152

Culture of Wheat, by D. Lee, M. D 207

Wheat Crop of the United States, by Hon. C. P. Hokomb 215

Corn, condensed account of...... „ 223

Culture of Indian Corn, by D. Lee, M. D \ 231

Sheep Husbandry, Wool, &c 242

Wool-growing and Wool Depots, by H. Blanchard, Esq 244

Sheep, Wool, and Depots, by T. C. Peters, Esq 2Sl

Sheep Husbandry and Wool Depots, by S. McFarland, Esq 256

Root Crops 259

Potato Culture, byD. Lee, M. D , 261

Culture of Root Crops, by Wm. P. Fogg, Esq , 265

Growing Potatoes from seed, by Hon. C. E. Clarke 269

Orchards, Fruits, &c 271

Orchards, their management, by A. W. Dodge 276

The fine 0f North Carolina, by Hon. L. Sawyer 283

Transplanting Grape Vines, by Robert Neale, Esq 286

Oats 288

Hay 291

Domestic Animals 294

Lime, Plaster, and other Fertilizers 300

Application of Lime, by E. Kohler, Esq j 302

Charcoal and Water, by D. Lee, M. D 304

Rice Crop of South Carolina, by R. F. W. Allston, Esq. 305

Cotton and Cotton Culture, byD. Lee, M. D 307

Cultivation of Cotton, by M. W. Philips, M. D..... 313

Analysis of Cotton Seed and Wool, by Prof. Sheppard, S. C 317

Prize Essay on the Culture of Tobacco, by W. W. W. Bowie, Esq • 318

Culture of Cuba Tobacco 326

Centennial Hemp, translated by F. G. Skinmer, Esq 327

Cost of growing Hemp, by G. W. Samuel, Esq 328

New mode of water-rotting Hemp, by J. Anderson, Esq 329

Explanation of Plate 2 332

Observations on various Insects 333

Explanation of Plate 3 338

Observations on Insects affecting Peas and Beans 339

Irrigation, by F. G. Skinner, Esq 342

Improved Hay Fork, by M. Larkki, Esq 365

Time for felling Timber, by William Painter, Esq 367

Chemical properties ©f Milk and Butter, by Wm. P. Fogg, Esq = 368

Sweet-scented Vernal Grass and Butter, by G. Emerson, Esq 373

New York Dairies, by B. P. Johnson, Esq 375

Cultivation of Pepper-rnint, by Dewitt C. Van Slyck 387

Parisitic Fungi, by Rev. E. Sidney (England) 391

Improvement of worn-out Lands, by H. Burgwyn, Esq 400

Cultivation of Tea Plant in the U. States, by Junius Smith, Esq 402

Degeneration of the Sugar Cane, by J. Pritchard, Esq 403

Melsen's Plan of making Sugar 405

Bacon for Europe, by Allen & Anderson, Liverpool .. 424

Horticulture and Pomology 428

Pomological Convention, by J. A. Kennicott, M. D 429

Repsrt ®n Fruit„ fey Heman Wendell, M. D 445

3

4

•

Farming among the Sioux Indians, by P. Prescott, Esq r 451

Wheat vs. Cheat, by J. P. Plummer, Esq 455

Cultivation of Florida Tobacco, by John J. Reardon, Esq 456

Culture of the Olive, by L. W. Tinelli, U. S. Consul..... 461

Culture of Broom Corn, by Sanford Howard, Esq 462

Acknowledgments and Correspondence 464

Georgia Burr Millstones 467

Samples of Cotton 468

Organic Analysis of Maize, by J. H. Salisbury, M. D 4/0

Analy&is of Broom Corn ' 473

« Buckwheat 4/4

Analysis of Ash of Fruit Trees, by E. Emmons, M. D 475

« " Forest Trees 476

" " Peas and Beans, by Prof. Way 487

FlaxSeed " " 488

« Prairie Soil, by Prof. J. V. Z. Blaney 488-

Tobacco Trade, R. K\ Hall & Son 491

Hogs Packed in the West, by L. Cadwell, Esq 493

Imports of Breadstuffs into Great Britain 49*

Commerce of the United States 499

Exports to Foreign Ports jj°/j

Navigation ^[J*

Area of Territories in Acres ; &JJJ

Area of United States in Acres £?r

Cotton Trade °10

Iron Trade... ■ ., j?jj

Oregon Lumber Trade « £[£

Provision Trade *]%

Wool Trade * \\%

Tea Trade %\6

Whale Fishing in 1849 J?1*

North-west Coast Fishing JjX

Tobacco Inspections. &c, at New York Jl'

Canal Trade - ;••■ jj}°

Commerce of Portland, Maine J*jj

Bangor Lumber Trade ; ;••• 'j£®

Commerce of Boston :"* ^t

Arrivals at New York in 1849 &**

Exports of Breadstuffs do «■£-

Commerce of Philadelphia £**

Commerce of Baltimore °.6b

Commerce of Charleston ; gjb

Imports into New Orleans from the Interior »jj<

Imports of Foreign Merchandise into New Orleans »«J«

Commerce of New York Canals jjjl

Commerce of Buffalo • J|*J

Trade of Toledo.., JJ'

Trade of Oswego °?°

Trade of Vermillion, Ohio J?;?"

Commerce of Huron, Ohio y.\

Statistics of Michigan £?]j

Commerce of Detroit " ,_.

St .i i ; sties of Iowa " --c

Statistics of Ohio " ^

Commerce of Cleveland j! \

Ohio, her Wealth and Resources ™r

Iron Manufactures of Cincinnati gj*

Commerce of St. Louis -.J

Statistics of Kentucky for 1848 and '49 gjji

Statistics of Cottou for 1818 and '49 ^J,

Trade of Cuba r)y.'

Exporter, Calcutta " V/-

Lisl of Contributors

E E P 0 E T

COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS

Patent Office, Washington, 20th April, 1850. To the Hon. Howell Cobb,

Speaker of the House of Representatives. Sir : — Part II. of the Report of this Bureau for 1849 is herewith re- spectfully submitted.

It is devoted exclusively to the great and growing interests of Agricul- ture; and is accompanied with further researches by Professor Beck on the breadstuffs of the United States ; besides general remarks on the adapta- tion of soil to the cuUure of the cereals, value of American breadstuffs, nutritious properties of various kinds of food, &c. Prof. B. gives the results of analyses of wheat and of wheaten flour from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, and Wisconsin; of wheat and flour shipped for exportation from various ports of the Union, and of the same substance, the growth of Canada, Chili, France, and Spain.

With the view of adding to the general interest and to the popular value of this portion of the annual expose, the Secretary of the Interior directed that the task of collating and arranging the materials for it should be com- mitted to a practical and scientific agriculturist. This has accordingly been done, and in the following pages will be found the result.

I have the honor to be,

Most respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

THOMAS EWBANK.

6 Doc. No. 20.

Sir : — Agreeably to your request, I have prepared, and have the honor herewith to submit, some remarks on the Statistics and Progress of Agri- culture in the United States for the year 1849.

The communications received in answer to the Circulars issued from the Patent Office in the usual form, number some four hundred. Not a few of these are extended essays, and all contain useful facts or suggestions, which have been gratuitously furnished by the contributors. To publish the whole would require two large volumes in place of one of moderate size ; and to reject three-fourths of the matter in hand seemed a poor return to the many gentlemen, in almost every State, who have kindly proffered their services to promote the most important interest of the Republic.

Under these circumstances, it was thought not amiss to rewrite and greatly condense three-fourths ef the letters and essays intended for the Report; This labor has been great, and has not been performed without assistance ; but it has saved some ten thousand dollars in printing, and, it 'is hoped, with improvement to the document, and without doing injustice to any correspondent.

The undersigned deems it not out of place to offer a few suggestions in reference to the ways and means now available for the improvement of American Agriculture.

Agricultural Education.

Since 1823, when Judge Buel introduced the first bill to establish an. Agricultural College in the State of New York by legislative aid, constant efforts have been made to render the study of rural economy as a science, not less than its practice as an art, popular in this country. Twenty seven years have now elapsed — a wjjfcole generation has passed off the stage — and New York, with her five hundred thousand cultivators of the soil, is still without the first agricultural school worthy of the name ; nor is any other State in a better condition. Dark as this view of agricultural education really is, it is the darkness that precedes the dawn of a bright and happy day. Men who have labored for the improvement of Agriculture, and the eleva- tion of Agriculturists, for a quarter of a century, with little of hope and less of pecuniary reward, now realize the beginning of an auspicious change in public sentiment. Thanks to agricultural journals and societies, the people will soon discover that labor and capital, devoted to tillage and hus- bandry, are as worthy of legislative consideration as labor and capital ; employed in mining, commerce, and manufactures. So soon as this truth shall be fairly comprehended, the Long struggle of the friends of improve- ment will he crowned with success, and the victory won over both ignorance

and its traditions.

It is indeed wonderful how long those enlightened, reasoning farmers, who, like Washington, cherish a due respect for their high calling, have had

Doc. No. 20. 7

to beg and beg in vain of State Legislatures, and of Congress, for a little assistance to prevent the universal impoverishment of American soils. What- ever has been done to arrest the exhaustion of arated lands has been effected not only without due aid from Government, but in spite of a mis- taken policy, which encourages the removal of all the elements of bread and. meat from cultivated fields, and their speedy transportation beyond the possibility of restitution. Neither the earnest recommendation of the illus- trious farmer of Mt. Vernon, nor the prayers of two generations of agricul- turists, nor the painful fact that nearly all tilled lands were becoming less and less productive, could induce any Legislature to foster the study of agriculture as a science. Happily, this term, when used in connection with rural affairs, is no longer the subject of ridicule. Some pains have been taken, in this Report, to prove that one thousand millions of dollars, judiciously expended, will hardly restore the one hundred million acres of partially ex- hausted lands in the Union to that richness of mould, and strength of fertility for permanent cropping, which they possessed in their primitive state.

The continued fruitfulness of the earth is an interest far greater and more enduring than any form of government.

If the twenty-two millions of people now in the United States may right- fully consume the natural fertility of one-third of the arable lands of the country, the forty-four millions who will be here twenty-five years hence may properly extinguish the productiveness of the remaining two-thirds of all American territory.

A great principle is involved in the science of agriculture, which reaches through indefinite generations, and forms the basis of all possible improve- ments, and of the highest hopes of our race. All advancement is impracti- cable in a country that closely approximates the condition of a desert. As a nation ef farmers, is it not time that we inquire by what means, and on what terms, the fruitfulness of the earth, and the health and vigor of its in- valuable products, may be forever maintained, if not forever improved ?

These are questions of universal concernment, to the careful and rigid investigation of which no man should refuse to lend a listening ear. A governmental policy which results in impoverishing the natural fertility of land, no matter by what popular name it is called, must have an end. It is only a question of time when this truly spendthrift course, this abuse of the goodness of Providence, shall meet its inevitable punishment. To show the necessity of reform, a plain estimate has been made, in the chapter on "Agricultural Statistics," to prove that we annually waste enough of the elements of bread, without which not the first kernel of corn can be formed, to produce one thousand million bushels of this important staple.

The Boa*d of Agriculture of the State of Ohio estimates thdjk-op of corn in 1849, within the limits of that State, at seventy million busi^ls ; and it will hardly be extravagant to say that the farmers of Ohio, Indiana, Michi- gan, Illinois, and Wisconsin export a million tons of breadstuffs and provi-

8 Doc. No. 20.

sions where they import one ton of the atoms drawn from their virgin soils, to form agricultural products. Can it be said, in truth, that a million tons of bread and meat are produced from nothing ? Will it be contended that the earth within the reach of good ploughing contains an unlimited amount of the precise things consumed to make the plants, whose organic and inor- ganic elements are taken from the soil and never restored ? If this be true, then all fertilizers are not only unnecessary, but absolutely worthless. This cannot be so, for lands that, seventy years ago, produced from twenty-five to thirty-five bushels of wheat in the State of New York, now yield only from six to nine bushels per acre ; and in all the old planting States, the results of exhaustion are still more extensive and still more disastrous.

A lack of mental culture and discipline is the' most serious impediment to the diffusion of agricultural science among the mass of farmers. Its lan- guage is to them an unknown tongue. Hence the most sublime truths in the economy of nature are shut out from the popular understanding. It is feared that this will ever be the case until schools, designed to teach those branches of learning which the practical farmer greatly needs, but does not possess, are established and maintained throughout the United States. So long as we refuse to plant the seed, it is folly to expect a rich harvest of knowledge.

We over-estimate the value of mere physical strength, like that of the ox or mule, and under- estimate the intrinsic worth of cultivated, well-developed reason, in practical agriculture. No inconsiderable degree of mental culture must precede all scientific tillage and husbandry. An oak is not matured from an acorn in a day, nor in a year ; nor is it possible to form, in a single generation, a universally educated and highly improved race of men. Such improvements, to be general and fixed in a people, as a distinguishing fea- ture in their character, must be deeply impressed on several successive generations.

As a class, farmers have few advantages for being well informed in the rapid progress now making in the economical improvement of soils, culti- vated plants, and domestic animals. This lack of opportunity is a serious misfortune, and leads to this practical result : With five million farm labor- ers— two million seven hundred thousand in the slave-holding, and two million three hundred thousand in the free States — American agriculturists so misdirect this immense power of production, that the injury done to one hundred million acres of land is nearly equal to all the apparent net profits on the whole rural industry of the country.

To illustrate an important fact as well as principle, let us suppose a farm- er produces crops worth one thousand dollars, and they cost him, including all expenses for labor, wear of implements, interest on capital, &c, eight hun- dred and fift^lollars. Nominally, he has a profit of one hundred and fifty dol- lars. But i#often happens that, if he should undertake to replace in his cultivated fields as much of potash, soda, magnesia, phosphorus, soluble silica

Doc. No. 20. 9

and other elements of crops, as both tillage and cropping had removed, it would cost him one hundred and seventy-five or two hundred dollars to effect that purpose. It is only by consuming the natural fertility of the land that he has realized any profit.

In a national point of view, all labor that impoverishes the soil is worse than thrown away. No fact in the science of political economy is more im- portant than this. To reduce a field, which in its virgin state produced forty bushels of corn per acre, down to twenty, in ten years, and then cultivate it forty years and harvest only twenty bushels per acre, in place of forty, is equal to a loss of four hundred bushels of corn per acre, or one- half the diminished product, without any equivalent whatever. Thus to impoverish land is to wither the muscles of both man and beast employed in its tillage.

Human toil is often praised for being highly productive, when, had the whole truth been known, it would have been seen to be remarkably destructive. — Labor never creates a particle of new matter by ploughing deep or shallow: but it frequently places the elements of grain, cotton, and provisions beyond the reach of all scientific farmers who may live hereafter and find the soil wanting in the raw material for making human food and raiment. There appears to be no government that realizes its duty "to promote the public welfare" by widely diffusing among its citizens a knowledge of the true prin- ciples of tillage, and by impressing upon them the obligation which every cultivator of the soil owes to posterity, not to leave the earth in a less fruit- ful condition 1>han he found it.

The Ravages of Insects.

Such insects as Hessian and wheat flies, curculios, weevils, army and boll worms, annually destroy crops to the amount of twenty millions of dollars. If a pirate on the high seas, or an Indian savage on land, injures the pro- perty of a citizen to the amount of a few dollars, millions are expended, if need be, to punish the offender. This is right. But when public enemies of a different name do a thousand times more injury to a whole country, are its citizens under any necessary restraint which forbids their making a common effort to protect their property from insect devastators ? Parasitic plants, such as rust on wheat and many fungi, as well as injurious insects, are on the increase. To attempt to explain the reasons why this is so, would lead at once into questions in animal and vegetable physiology, out of place in this brief synopsis of such rural topics as are believed to be of general interest.

It may not be amiss to remark, however, that many boys are apparently educated to kill all small birds that subsist mostly on insects, so soon as these youngsters are large enough to shoulder a gun.

Government can do much to check the ravages of insects by collecting and diffusing useful information as to their habits, times of transformation,

10 Doc. No. 20.

and the best means of destroying or avoiding them. If farmers fold their arms and say that nothing can be done, by the science of entomology, or by any other means, what but an increase of the evil is to be expected? Not to try to escape the infliction is treating one's enemies with unmanly for- bearance, and evinces a belief in fatalism worthy of a disciple of Mohammed.

Analysis of Soils, Marls, and Fertilizers.

Something should be done in reference to the analysis of soils, fertilizers, marls, and other minerals constantly sent to the Patent Office for that pur- pose. For many years, chemists and philosophers have been investigating the affinities and other peculiarities of "molecules" or ultimate indivisible particles of matter. These scientific researches have revealed many import- ant truths and natural laws, which have a direct bearmg on all the eco- nomical purposes of agriculture. Some pains should be taken to impart a knowledge of these laws to all practical farmers. When we consider how little opportunity the mass of agriculturists have to study the chemical com- position of their soils and crops, it can readily be seen that information of this kind is greatly needed in all operations which aim to feed cultivated plants with their appropriate aliment.

Professor Henry, the distinguished Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu- tion, has authorized me to say that the extensive chemical apparatus and excellent laboratory of the Institution will be at the service of any reputable chemist, to make investigations for the increase and diffusion of knowledge in this braifch of science.

I have compiled for this Report about one hundred analyses, embracing most of the cereals, several grasses, clovers, legumes, roots, cotton, tobacco, flax, and the ash of fruit and forest trees, from the latest European and American authorities. These analyses will be found valuable for reference.

An elaborate paper on the " Study of Soils," giving the chemical compo- sition of their parent rocks, the amount of the elements of crops in a cubic foot of earth, available as food for plants, together with researches into Hie annual production and consumption of mould, the variation of the tempera- ture and hygrometric properties of soils, has been deferred to keep this document within a moderate size. For a similar reason, no space has been allowed for mere guesses ax, the quantity of grain and other crops grown in the year 1849.

The Preservation of Provisions.

The science of preserving meat, lard, butter, cheese, and other animal aa

well as vegetable substances, used as feud for man. has received very little

attention in this country. This neglect causes :i loss of many millions

every year. To say nothing of the bad taste of eating SO much frowv and

rancid butter at borne, full one-half of all that is sent to England and other foreign countries is sold at half the price of sweet butter, by reason

Doc. No. 20. 11

of the defective manner in which it is manufactured and put up for market. American farmers have great advantages for the economical production of beef and pork, mutton and wool, and it will render them a valuable service to obtain from Europe correct information of all discoveries and improvements, either in the growing and feeding of domestic animals, or in the curing of provisions.

Few are aware how susceptible of improvement is the living machinery which elaborates milk for nearly every family in the Union. There is a reliable account, in this Report, of a dairy of forty-one cows, kept in the State of New York, which yields sixty-two dollars in butter, cheese, and milk, as the product of each cow a year. From the returns of the last State census, it is safe to say that one million one hundred thousand cows are now milked in that State, which are supposed to yield about twenty dollars per head. To improve these up to an average annual product of thirty-one dollars each (that is, to one-half what the best large dairies in the country now yield) would add twelve million one hundred thousand dollars to the income of the citizens of a single State. This gain, by the improvement of one kind of rural machinery, would be equivalent to creating a capital of two hundred millions of dollars, and placing the money where it would yield over six per cent, interest in perpetuity.

If all the sheep in the United States gave as good returns in wool for the food consumed, as the best one hundred thousand now do, it would add at least sixty million pounds to the annual clip of this important staple.

In one of his letters to Sir John Sinclair, General Washington says, in substance, that, at the time he entered the public service in the War of the Revolution, his flock (about one thousand) clipped five pounds of wool per fleece. Seven years after, when he returned to his estate, his flock had so degenerated that it gave an average of only two and a half pounds per head, which was the common yield of Virginia sheep then as it is now.

Although the numerous importations of superior sheep, cattle, horses, and swine have greatly benefited the country, it must be admitted that much has been lost by suffering improved animals to deteriorate. Every wool grower should ponder well this fact. If two and a half pounds of wool will pay the whole cost of keeping a sheep a year, five pounds will pay one hundred per cent, profit on that cost. Washington was eminently a " book-farmer," and was anxious to gain knowledge from the educated agriculturists of Europe and of his own country. His overseer believed in keeping sheep as his father did, and was opposed to all innovations in husbandry.

There are now not far from six million horses and mules in the United States : and it is not too much to say that in a few generations these animate may be improved full $30 a head on an average. If so, then the gain by this increase of muscular power, and its greater durability, will be one hundred and eighty million dollars. If we study critically the machinery for converting grass, roots, and grain into beef and pork, the difference is

12 Doc. No. 20.

found to be still more striking. Let the facts relating to this subject be spread before the people, and great improvements will soon follow; and all classes will share equally -in the profits of more productive labor.

The distribution of Seeds and Cuttings.

It is a law of nature, now fully recognized by men of science, that all cul- tivated plants and fruits, as well as all animals, are subject to constitutional de- terioration, and are susceptible of organic improvement. Hence one thousand seeds of one variety of wheat, corn, cotton, or tobacco will produce a larger return, under equal advantages of climate, soil, and culture, than a like number of seeds of another variety.

Plants propagated by buds, like sugar-cane, potatoes, and fruit-trees, are peculiarly liable to constitutional weakness, and are less able than seedlings to endure rude treatment in violation of the laws of vegetable life. On many plantations the vital force of the sugar-cane is nearly exhausted: and this office is strongly urged to procure from countries where the plant is indigenous and grows from the seed, a new stock both of seeds and rat- toons for the use of planters. In cultivating this tropical plant in districts bounding its zone on the north, much care and some science will be found highly useful.

Both seeds and cuttings of the best figs and olives grown on the coast of the Mediterranean should be procured through American consuls resident at the different cities on the borders of that sea. Figs and grapes, "oil and wne," will some day be numbered among the staples of the Southern States.

There is reason to believe that the most improved varieties of wheat grown in England and France would be a valuable acquisition to this country ; and our wheat-growers would esteem it an especial favor if only a few bushels were procured for general distribution. With the small sum appro- priated for the purpose, about eighty thousand packages of seeds have been put up and distributed, within the last three months. With a better organ- ization and greater facilities for collecting seeds and cuttings, vastly more good might be done. There are now some two hundred thousand copies of agricultural papers and periodicals printed, which circulate more or less in every State in the Union. These are doing an invaluable service to the country. They cannot, however, enact laws for collecting annually reliable statistics of the results of labor and capital employed in Agriculture. Truthful statistics form the groundwork of all reforms — of all progress. State legislatures must aid in this great work. If *' knowledge is power," ignorance is weakness; and the removal of this weakness is one of the highest duties of v,\vsy republiean government. Either the assessors or col- lectors of State and couuly taxes should be provided with blanks to collect Useful information as well as money, from the people.

Doc. No. 20. 1$

How Cities exhaust the fertility of Land.

There has been enough of the elements of bread and meat, wool and cotton, £rawn from the surface of the earth, sent to London, and buried in the ground or washed into the Thames, to feed and clothe the entire popu- lation of the world for a century, under a wise system of agriculture and horticulture. Down to this day, great cities have ever been the worst desolaters of the earth. It is for this that they have been so frequently buried many feet beneath the rubbish of their idols of brick, stone, and mortar, to be exhumed in after ages by some antiquarian Layard. Their inhabitants violated the laws of nature which govern the health of man, and secure the enduring productiveness of the soil. How few comprehend the fact that it is only the elements of bread and meat evolved during the decomposition of some vegetable or animal substance that poison the air taken into human lungs, and the water that enters the human system in daily food and drink ! These generate pestilence and bring millions pre- maturely to their graves !

Why should the precious atoms of potash which organized the starch in all the flour, meal, and potatoes consumed in the cities of the United States in the year 1850, be lost forever to the world ? Can a man create a new atom of pot- ash, or of phosphorus, when the supply fails in the soil, as fail it must under t our present system of farm economy ? Many a broad desert in Eastern Asia once gladdened the husbandman with golden harvests. While America is the only country on the globe where every human being has enough to eat,, and millions are coming here for bread, how long shall we continue to im- poverish ninety-nine acres in a hundred of all that we cultivate ?

Botk pestilence and famine are the offsprings of ignorance. Rural science is not a mere plaything for the amusement of grown up children. It is a new revelation of the wisdom and goodness of Providence — a humanizing power, which is destined to elevate man an immeasurable distance above his present condition. To achieve this result, the light of science must not be confined to colleges; it must enter and illuminate the dwelling of every fanner and mechanic. The knowledge of the few, no matter how profound or how brilliant, can never compensate for the loss incurred by neglecting to develop the intellects of the many. No government should be wanting in sympathy with the people, whether the object be the prevention of dis- ease, the improvement of land, or the education of the masses. One per cent, of the money now annually lost by reason of popular ignorance will suffice to remove that ignorance.

I have the honor to be,

Very respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

DANIEL LEE.

Hon. Thomas Ewbank,

Commissioner of Patents.

14 Doe. No. 20.

I.

AGRICULTURAL STATISTICS.

The value of agrieultural statistics depends on their general accuracy and being reliable for all business purposes. Wrong information as to the quantity of grain, tobacco, and other crops, annually grown, and mis-state- ments in reference to their market value, are calculated to mislead the unwary — tempting thousands to invest and sink their capital in uncalled-for and disastrous operations.

In the absence of a regular census, there is no way to determine, with any approach to accuracy, the amount of grain and provisions annually produced ; and % is thought better to make no estimates at all, so far as the official returns are defective, than to fabricate statistics by mere guess- ing. The injury that results from this is not confined to the farming interest, but all dealers in and consumers of agricultural products are equally liable to sustain pecuniary loss by the public credit given to erro- neous statemqnts emanating from a department of the government. Who- ever attempts to furnish statistics should bear in mind that, in the same degree in which true information is valuable, false information is injurious \o the community. Certainly the great farming interest of the country has a rig^t to exemption from harm, if government can do it no good.

The wheat crop of Michigan has been estimated at ten million bushels. The census of that State for 1849 gives the amount at four miMion seven hundred and thirty-nine thousand two hundred and ninety-nine bushels, showing an over-estimate of more than one hundred per cent. Instead of placing the value of the estimated ten million bushels at something like the worth of this crop to the producer, every bushel is set down at one doDar and fifteen cents, giving an aggregate of eleven million five hundred thou- sand dollars. Seventy cents are quite as much as the farmers of Michigan realized for their wheat in 1848 ; and, by correcting both the quantity and price, the figures are reduced to three million three hundred and seventeen thousand five hundred ami nine dollars, or to nearly one-fourth of the sum said to have been obtained.

Hitherto no very definite objects appear to have been sought in collect- ing statistical information pertaining to rural rfffairs. In consequence of this lack of purpose, the means employed have been inadequate, except to accumulate a mass of figures for the truth of whose statements no one responsible". Statistics, to be worthy of the name, must be founded on facts entitled to confidence. What evidence is there on which one may presume to name the tons of bay or bushels of grain grown in the State of N '\v York in the year L849? There is none whatever, ner has there been any • the Si ate census of 1845. Why, then, waste time and paper in writ- ing ami printing crude guesses, in an official document, to mislead the public? Instead <>f repeating an operation which is believed to be worse lees, b humble attempt wil] be made in this chapter to point out a <i the agricultural statistics of the country, and suggest sucfe improvements as are most desirable and practicable.

If tlir question were asked, of whal crop grown mi the Onil i do

Doe. No. 20. 15

the people export the largest amount in value, the answer would be, cot- ton; for it pajs for nearly two-thirds of all the imports of the country. If an American statesman, merchant, or farmer were to ask, how many acres are planted in this crop, the answer must be : I cannot say, for in no cot- ton-gr@wing State has a census ever been taken, either by the Federal (jrovernment or by its legislature, which gave the number of acres devoted to this staple.

Here is a most extraordinary omission, and one which has largely con- tributed to the unwise exhaustion of millions of acres of the best cotton lands in the world.

If the question were asked, how many acres are planted in tobacco? nobody can tell ; for neither Congress nor any State government has deemed the matter of sufficient importance to ascertain the fact. No United States census has ever given information as to the number of acres sown in wheat, rye, barley, oats, hemp, flax, or peas, or planted in corn, potatoes, beans, or any other hoed crop.

If the questions were asked, how many sheep were shorn in 1840 to yield the thirty-five million eight hundred and two thousand one hundred and fourteen pounds of wool, and how many lambs were not counted as " sheep" in the nineteen million fhree hundred and eleven thousand three hundred and seventy-four enumerated, no one can answer. The fleeces clipped have never been counted ; nor has any census given the number of eows milked in the United States. So far as reliable statistics are concerned, all our farming operations are conducted in midnight darkness. Nothing is so much needed as the annual record of trustworthy facts, extending over all the States, setting forth the productive power and value of both land and labor, when employed to the best advantage. So soon as this shall be done, whether by State Legislatures or Congress, it will be seen that the labor and soil of one farmer give twice as good returns for the benefit of himself and the community at large, as do the labor and soil of another, although the land of both may be alike productive. The returns procured through the medium ef a few plain, simple questions, put by the assessors or col- lectors of taxes, would demonstrate the truth of the above remark; and, when demonstrated, those who fail to use their means to the best advantage will discover their errors and immediately change for the better.

S© soon as legislatures shall be willing to promote improvements in tillage and husbandry, nothing is easier than to effect the desired object. Bring the practical results of the art, the science, and the energy devoted to agricul- ture often b^ore the public, and th® influence of thousands of good examples will tell powerfully in favor of universal advancement. Good and bad farm- ing are now so blended that delinquents escape nearly all exposure ; while such as do well are denied that distinction which is the just reward of merit. There is no resisting a legitimate argument, sustained by conceded facts. Mistakes in practice and errors in theory must give way before the light of truth ; and the truth alone should be diligently sought, and widely dissemi- nated among the farmers of the Republic.

When we shall be permitted to know the exact difference in the organic structure and productive value of the machinery which transforms grass, grain, roots, and other vegetable food into milk, meat, wool, and horseflesh, it will be seen that some domestic animals yield a profit ten times larger thata. others. There are samples of wool in the Patent Office, the product ef a sheep that yields 18 lbs. of washed wool a year and weighs 420 &>s. This

16 Doc. No. 20.

mammoth sheep is the property of Colonel Josiah W. Ware, of Clarke county, Virginia, whose best fat wethers sell at thirty-five dollars a head.

In no branch of husbandry can greater or more profitable improvements be made than in wool-growing. Instead of importing so many millions of pounds of wool, in broadcloth, flannel, and raw material, American farmers should supply the home demand, and have a large surplus for export. It is much to be regretted that the census of 1850 will give no information as to the number of fleeces clipped in the United States. Without thisknowledge.it will be impossible to know what county or district gives the most wool per fleece.

The statistics of the dairy business are more defective than those pertaining to sheep-husbandry. The counting of cows in all the States is the first step toward their universal improvement ; but this is yet to be taken. Previous to 1845, the number milked in the State of New York was not known ; and it required some effort to persuade its legislature to have them counted. In that year, the number was nine hundred and ninety nine thousand, four hundred and ninety. This number (so near a million) attracted public atten- tion to the production of butter and cheese, and the improvement of milch kine, in a remarkable degree.

To the New York State Agricultural Society, and especially to its inde- fatigable secretary, B. P. Johnson, Esq.,' great credit is due for successful efforts to advance this important interest. It is thought by those best informed on the subject that one million ©ne hundred thousand cows in that State now yield an average return of twenty dollars a head. One of its best dairymen expresses the opinion, in the Transactions of the State Society for 1849, that the dairy products of that commonwealth will reach, at no distant day, fifty million dollars per annum. The business is rapidly extending in northern Ohio, and more or less as far south as Georgia. Excellent cheese, from two dairies in that State, were exhibited at the well attended State Fair held at Stone Mountain, in August, 1849. About sixty cows ar? milked in one of these dairies, and not far from one hundred in the other. Both are profitable, new cheese selling at from ten to fifteen cents a pound. The annual consumption of cheese at the South is increas- ing, and we know nothing that should prevent the farmers of Tennessee and other States in that quarter of the Union from producing enough for home consumption, if they make none to export. There are dairies in the State of New York which turn out six hundred pounds of good cheese per cow in a year ; but from throe hundred to four hundred pounds rs a more common yield.

Intimately connected with the economical production of butter and cheese, is the art of making cheap pork for family use. For rearing pigs, butter- milk and whey are admirably adapted; but where hogs are to be grown in a I rge way, a different system is practiced. CloTer,'peas, and oats, ted oi'i' in the field by hogs, produce moat, at a cheaper rate than i; ean be made on oorn alone. According to the results attained by Mr. Ellsworth, late Commissioner of Patents, three ami a half pounds of corn will form a pound of good pork; although most farmers giro five pounds of corn for one of pork. <m,- tati bios relating to the production of meat, whether beef, toork, veal, or mutten, ar< meagre ami extremely defective. Very little science has been broughl i" the aid of Am rmers either in the production

or curing of provisions of any Bort. Cn shipping perishable commodities of this kind to distant markets, and particularly to England, agriculturists in this country labor under many disadvantages. Much of the salt sold in

Doc. No. 20. 17

the United States is too impure to save meat, butter, and cheese well. From this defect alone, immense losses are sustained.

To compete with Englishmen in feeding people at their own doors, while Americans have to transport their breadstuffs and provisions from three to four thousand miles to reach the consumer, is obviously a hard business for our farmers. In the operation, their cultivated fields lose all that is ex- ported, and receive nothing whatever in return. But independently of this, probably more than half the butter sent to England from this country is sold as grease, and at half the market price of a good article. This injures the reputation of all American butter, and diminishes the demand for it abroad. Equal complaint is made of the bad methods in which we eure and handle bacon for English consumption. Our export of pickled pork, bacon, lard, and live hogs, during the year ending June 30th, 1849, was nine millions two hundred and forty-five thousand eight hundred and eighty- five dollars. After making due allowance for every disadvantage, it is believed to be better farm economy to convert corn into pork and lard to send abroad, than to export the grain or meal. By thus saving all the manure which the corn will make, the expense of growing this crop, and consequently the cost of the pork and lard, may b$ reduced from twenty- five to fifty per cent. Ripe dry corn should be boiled, especially if it is not ground, before it is fed to swine, cattle, or sheep. And it will more than pay the expense to boil corn fed to working mules, horses, or oxen.

The statistics of the raw materials consumed and wasted in the produc- tion of every crop, and in the food of every animal kept on the farm, deserve to be studied with peculiar care. Eew appreciate the immense loss sustained by first impoverishing arable lands, and then cultivating them in wheat, cotton, corn, grass, and other crops, with a poor return for the labor be- stowed. In a national point of view, it is susceptible of demonstration that all labor which impairs the natural productiveness of the earth is worse than thrown away, no matter what the price paid for the products of such labor. We should ever bear in mind that the continued fruit-fulness of the soil is above all price.

It may not be amiss to inquire what amount of ike elements of bread and meat, cotton, tobacco, and other crops, is annually extracted from the sur- face of the earth in this country, and never restored to the fields whence it was taken. In answer to circulars issued from the Patent Office, several gentlemen at the South have stated that, to supply slaves on plantations with bread, including old and young, requires from twelve to thirteen bush- els of corn each a year. Taking thirteen bushels as the average consumption, of the twenty-two millions of people in the United States, of breadstuffs, and the aggregate is two hundred and eighty-six million bushels per annum.

Without deeming it necessary to go into an explanation to prove why it is so, the fact may safely be assumed that the elements of fertility contained in all the meat, milk, butter, cheese, potatoes, fruit, and garden vegetables consumed by the American people, exceed by ten per cent, the amount which exists in the grain consumed. It is sufficient for my purpose, how- ever, to place the estimate below ten per cent., and call the fertilizing f elements contained in these articles of human food equal to three hundred and fourteen million bushels of corn. By adding together the sums above named, we have six hundred million bushels of corn, in effect taken from American soils, of which next to none is ever returned in night-soil or liquid manure. 2

18 Boc. No. 20.

The most intelligent wool-growers estimate the number of sheep now in the United States at thirty millions. In 1840, the number of swine was twenty-six millions three hundred and one thousand two hundred and ninety-three. At the usual rate of increase, their present number is not far from thirty-five millions. The number of neat cattle in 1840 was four- teen millions nine hundred and seventy-one thousand five hundred and eighty-six. Their present number should be about nineteen millions. At the last census, the number of horses and mules was four millions three hun- dred and thirty-five thousand six hundred and sixty-nine. Their present number approaches six millions. By estimating all the poultry as equal to ten millions of sheep (a low estimate), there are now in the United States one hundred millions of domestic animals, not to count goats and dogs, of which there are some millions. That these domestic animals draw their sub- sistence from the soil is plain enough ; but to say what part of the elements of the food consumed is never restored to any improved land, is impossible. It is below the truth, in the judgment of the writer, to say that one-third of all the manure voided by the horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and swine in the United States is wasted. If so, the annual loss is more than equal to the production of two bushels of corn to each animal ; or the aggregate exceeds two hundred million bushels.

We have now to estimate the annual loss incident to the production of the great staples of cotton," tobacco, sugar-cane, hemp, and flax, not to name smaller crops. Not far from ten millions of acres are annually planted in cotton, cane, tobacco, and hemp. It is a serious misfortune that the census of 1850 will throw no light whatever on either of these crops, so far as the area planted is concerned. Judging from our knowledge of the subject, we should prefer to have a field produce twenty bushels of corn per acre, and part with all the grain, retaining the stalks, blades, cobs, weeds, and grass, to renovate the land, to having it cultivated in cotton, tobacco, or hemp, in the usual way of growing these crops. The damage done to the ten millions of acres devoted to the culture of these staples is equal to the growth and •exportation of two hundred million bushels of corn a year. While we have said nothing of the breadstuff's and provisions actually sent out of the coun- try, and have conceded that two-thirds of all the liquid and solid excretions of all domestic animals are saved and turned to a profitable account — a statement which few farmers familiar with the husbandry of many States will endorse — yet the aggregate loss is equal to the production of one thousand million bushels of corn, or of half that quantity of wheat- It may be said that this prodigious annual waste of the raw material for making human food and raiment is a matter of no practical consequence; and that each cubic foot of soil contains an unlimited amount of the precise tilings which nature consumes in forming cotton, wheat, corn, tobacco, sugar- cane, and other cultivated plants. This is the popular opinion, and tke practice of American agriculture is based on this mistaken theory. Those farmers who do most to impoverish their cultivated fields are the greatest theorists in the country. It is so much easier to adopt a ready-made theory, handed down from one's father and grandfather, than to study the several substances in a soil required to give a generous harvest, that ninety-nine in aMnmdred adopt the former course. How lew agriculturists have any clear knowledge of tke quantity of any essential element of wheat or corn available to the growing plant, which anv given amount of his soil contains! The atoms that form the crop, whether in the earth, or»in the atmosphere,

Doc. No. 20. 19

are rarely studied by practical farmers. Every cultivated plant contains an appreciable amount of potash and phosphorus — not to name other mine- rals drawn from the soil. Without some alkali and phosphoric acid, no one has ever succeeded in producing the seed of any cereal plant. Nor can a cotton, potatoe, or tobasco plant be grown to maturity without these soluble earthy salts, which appear as ashes when such plants are carefully burnt. If a farmer were to ask the price of phosphorus at any shop that deals in the article, he would find that it is worth from two to three dollars a pound. The phosphorus of commerce is mostly obtained from the bones of domestic animals.

The high market price of this substance proves its scarcity. There are few soils which contain, in an available form, so much as one part of phos- phoric acid, or one of potash in a thousand; and yet, in the plenitude of our national folly, we annually throw away in our cities, villages, and on our farms, enough of potash and phosphorus to make five hundred million bushels of wheat, or twice that quantity of corn ! Let the agriculturists who are troubled to raise good crops of wheat, remember that not far from eighty per cent, of the incombustible earthy matter consumed by nature m forming tSie seeds of this plant, are potash and phosphoric acid.

When will Congress or some State Legislature appropriate the small sum of' one thousand dollars, needed to demonstrate in a practical way the cost of making a new soil, equal in potash, soda, magnesia, lime, chlorine, soluble srlica, phosphorus, sulphur, nitrogen, and carbon, in the condition of mould, to a fair virgin earth, before the work of exhaustion begins?

Statistics of this kind would be invaluable to the whole country. Of course, the renovation of land can be effected much cheaper in some locali- ties than in others ; but the critical study of the subject, with reliable weights and measures, both of raw material consumed and product, at one place, would throw much light on one of the most important problems in the art and science of agriculture.

How much of the earthy elements of crops can an acre of tilled land part with every year, and not diminish in fertility? This is a question of fact, not one of theory ; and who among the three millions of farmers in the United States can answer it ?

So so.on as the American people can be persuaded to study Agricultural Statistics as a science, the surplus of the elements of bread and meat, wool and cotton, Tfhich reaily exists in some soils, will be carefully kusbanded, and applied in the most economical manner to such as lack in that regard. In this way, every acre having a climate congenial to the purpose can be made to yield a bale of cotton a year, or sixty bushels of corn, or twenty- live of wheat.

No department of husbandry is more interesting to the thoughtful farmer, or more promising of auspicious results, than the careful study of fertilizers. But we are sorry to say that no State in the Union has regarded statistics on this subject as worth the trouble of collecting. In several of the planting States, cotton seed is much used as a manure, and it is very desirable to know how many additional bushels of wheat or corn one thousand bushels of cotton seed ought to give the skillful agriculturist. We have reason to believe that one planter realizes twice the benefit from this exceedingly valuable fertilizer that is obtained by another. Similar remarks will apply to the manure derived from the consumption of one hundred or one thousand bushels of corn, where the whole matter voided is carefully preserved from loss.

20 Doc. No. 20.

The essential facts pertaining to the feeding both of plants and animals are permitted to remain in lamentable obscurity. Why should a farmer, who has a quantity of stable or yard manure to haul to a distant field, be compelled to carry out eighty-five loads of simple water in every one hundred of this valuable fertilizer ? It is rare indeed that barnyard manure contains less than eighty per cent, of water, and it often has eighty-eight per cent. Is there no way to avoid this obvious loss of labor? As one hundred pounds of guano (the dung of sea-birds) frequently produce five hundred of corn, or three hundred of wheat, why may not similar elements of crops, in the excretions of all domestic animals, be alike concentrated, and drilled in with the seed, or scattered broadcast over the land? Why throw away more solid, hard work on one hundred million acres, than all the mechanics and manufacturers in the country perform, in an attempt as foolish as to carry freight in knapsacks, and travel on foot in competition with modern rail- roads? If one hundred pounds of the best guano is better to augment a crop of grain than a like weight of common loam, or stable manure, there must be a reason why this is so. What is this reason ? We can only give a few hints ; and in the first place, let the reader consider well the fact, that in one hundred pounds of wheat there are ninety-five of the elements of water, and charcoal, called carbon.

Now, wheat plants are not wholly dependent on the mould in the soil for carbon and the elements of water ; and the farmer should take advantage of this fact. The other five parts in one hundred of wheat being organized nitrogen, and the incombustible part of the seed, are less abundant, in an available condition ; and these lacking ingredients must be supplied by the husbandman. Of these elements guano really contains, when pure, and the dung of pigeons also contains, more than any other product of nature. Hence, when estimated in pounds, the dry excrements of birds are more valuable than those of cattle, or of man even, although the man, the ox, and the bird may each consume corn or wheat. There is reason to believe that when birds cat two hundred ounces of wheat, their excretions dried will weigh about the same as those of a man or pig formed by half that quantity of wheat, provided neither animal nor bird gains or loses in weight. The solid excre- tions of a horse, and, so far as is known, of all quadrupeds, by the bowels and kidneys, are about forty per cent, of the food consumed.

The other sixty parts in one hundred escape from the system mostly as car- bonic acid and vapor given oif in breathing. In birds, the weight of the matter which escapes through their lungs is some eighty per cent., and the guano about twenty per cent. If this estimate approximates the truth, then a pigeon must consume five hundred grains ki weight of wheat or worms to form one hun- dred of dry dung; and, if nature is true to herself, the fertilizer derived from five hundred grains of wheat 'should reproduce the amount consumed. The essential truth in this matter is, that so much of the elements of animal food as escape into the atmosphere by respiration and insensible perspiration, may safely bo dispensed with in feeding cultivated plants. The matter that escapes is mainly the elements of water and carbonic aci I. Although organize*" carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen are fair from being valueless as manure, the; are not so indispensab] • to be artificially applied as ammonia and salts of potash, lime, and magne I uoh the larger portion of the food of animals,

q into the stomacl rbed and passes into the blood-vessels.

[f any one branch of more important than the otto

it is that which reh '■><> skillful bios and use of manure. Feif

Doc. No. 20. 21

&re aware how much labor and money are lost by popular Ignorance on this subject. Boussingault fed a horse which neither gained nor lost weight, with twenty pounds of hay, six pounds of oats, and forty-two pounds of water a-day. In the food consumed, there were twenty-two pounds six ounces of perfectly dry matter. The dung and urine voided in twenty- four hours, when equally dried, weighed ten p3unds three ounces, showing a loss by breathing and insensible perspiration of twelve pounds three ounces. In the hay and oats, there were ten pounds six ounces of carbon (charcoal) ; in the excrements, only three pounds eleven ounces seven pen- nyweights ; being a loss of nearly seventy per cent.

In the food, there were eight pounds seven ounces two pennyweights of oxygen (vital air) ; in the excrements, only three pounds seven ounces six- teen pennyweights. The loss in weight of hydrogen (it existing in the food as one to eight of oxygen) was in about the same proportion. There were four ounces nine pennyweights of azote (nitrogen) in the food, of which three ounces fourteen pennyweights appeared in the dung and urine. Of earthy salts, there were one pound six ounces ten pennyweights in the hay and oats ; in the excretions, one pound six ounces two pennyweights.

The critical study of the above data will show that one hundred pounds of hay and oats yield about forty pounds of dry manure. It is known that manure heats, ferments, rots, and loses weight. This chemical operation can be so conducted as to reduce the weight one half, without essentially or equally reducing its fertilizing power.

If a pound of ammonia, phosphates of potash, soda, lime, and magnesia, is worth as much in night-soil as in imported guano, then there is no need whatever of importing manure from Peru and Africa. We learn from dealers in the article, that some sixty thousand dollars are paid for Peruvian guano a year in the District of Columbia alone. Not only can this sum of money be saved, but guano equal to, and identical with the Peruvian, can he manufactured and sold in the city of Washington at half the price of the imported article, at a fair profit. There is not an element in guano which does not exist in bread and meat ; and taking the market value of this dung of sea-birds as the standard (fifty dollars a ton), and the fertilizers annually wasted in this eity (Washington) are worth one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. If Congress will give the agricultural department of the Patent Office five hundred dollars to test this matter in a practical way, the best method of preparing poudrette can be published in the next annual report from this office, and will be received with great satisfaction by the farmers of every State in the Union. It is no reflection on American agriculturists to say, that the science of preparing manures is little understood ; for we have no agricultural schools in the country, and neither Congress nor any State Legislature has given a dollar to foster the scientific investigation of fertilizers.

Some may say that this subject has nothing to do with agricultural sta- tistics, and that no facts but such as relate to the quantity and value of crops and other products of rural industry should be discussed under this head. But how is one to know the value of the hay and grain, grass and joots made and consumed on a farm, without regard to the meat, wool, butter, cheese, horses, mules, and manure, into which these crops are con- verted ?

S2 Doc. No. £0.

II.

A GENERAL VIEW OF AMERICAN AGRICULTURE.

CHAPTER I.

Tlie Position of American Farmers.

Every one that eats bread or wears cloth made of -wool, cotton, or flax, has a direct personal interest in the results of tillage and farm economy. Hunger and nakedness are wants of the most pressing character; and Provi- dence has placed them alike in every human being. In civilized communi- ties, all are equally dependent on successful agriculture for the means of subsistence. Let the soil be permanently exhausted, or fail but for a year to reward the labor of the husbandman, and no language can adequately describe the intensity of the universal suffering that must ensue. Hence this branch of national industry has peculiar and paramount claims to the earnest attention and the fostering care of all governments which are re- gardful of the public safety, and sustained by common sense.

American agriculture offers for consideration several interesting and striking features: prominent among these is the fact that nearly three- fourths of the kibor and capital of the country are employed in this single pursuit. Agriculturists are themselves a large majority of the voters, tax- payers, and consumers of all domestic and foreign goois.

Under our republican system, they are mainly responsible for the good government of each State, and of the Union. If their public servants, whether in Congress or State Legislatures, tail to promote improvements* in agriculture, as recommended by President Washington, the fault is not in their representative^ but in those who neglect to ask for such aid as Go- vernment may properly grant.

American farmers enjoy advantages superior to those of all other nations for improving both themselves as a class, and their landed estates, up to the highest capabilities of man, and of the earth which he cultivates. This Pie- public proffers to rural art and rural science more than one thousand mil- lions of acres of available farming lands; of which as little, or as much may Lc subdued ami improved as wisdom shall dictate. There is neither com- pulsion nor restraint in either direction. With this entire freedom of action sociated :i degree of Becurity for life, liberty, property, toleration of religion and exemption from onerous taxes, without a parallel in the history of ike world. in extent of sea coast, facilities for river, lake, and canal 'tti'in; iu variety of elimate, soil, vegetable and animal products; in indefinite and almost unlimited commercial, manufacturing, miner;;!, and hydraulic resources, no other country equate this. There is some danger, .< r, that we shall prove unworthy of so great blessings — that we may

the source whence they come, abuse the peculiar advantages and ex-

alted privileges which W6 possess, and blindly cling to the barbarous practico of impoverishing the Soilj to the incalculable injury of coining generations.

Doc. No. 20. 23

Instead of exhausting millions of aeres -without any adequate recompense, instead of looking longingly toward the wilderness of forest and prairie at the west, we should search closely into the lands already under the plough, and learn what can be done to add two, three, and fourfold to their present productiveness. The time has at last arrived when it is indispensable to the continued prosperity of all the older States that the principles both of renovating and exhausting cultivated fields be thoroughly and universally understood. i

A few Facts about Soils.

Soils contain, as a general thing, not more than one part in a thousand of the atoms, in an available condition which nature consumes in forming a crop of any kind. This statement expresses a fact of great practical im- portance ; for the husbanding of these fertilizing atoms is the first step toward arresting the impoverishment of the earth. It is the matter in the soil which makes crops in one arrangement of its atoms, and forms manure in another condition of the same atoms, that the farmer should learn to preserve from waste and loss.

Soils of different degrees of productiveness, where their mechanical tex- ture *nd physical properties are alike, always contain unlike quantities of the food of crops. It seems to make little difference how small is the amount of the lacking ingredient in the composition of cultivated plants. Its absence is fatal to the farther growth of the crop after its appropriate aliment fails in the soil. It is easy to discover the wisdom of this universal law. Suppose nature should organize grass, grain, and other plants which serve as the daily food of all the higher orders of animals, as well without bone-earth (phosphate of lime) as with that mineral — would it be possible for such grass and grain to yield to the blood of domestic animals, a?nd of man himself, that solid earthy matter which imparts strength to hu- man bones, and to those of oxen, horses, sheep, and swine? Certainly not. Although iron is always present in the food and blood of animals, no farmer ever killed a calf, a pig, or an ox, which had iron for the frame of its system. No anatomist ever saw a bone in the body of a person formed of other earthy atoms than such as Providence had fitted for that peculiar function in the animal economy.

The brains and muscles of all animals contain both sulphur and phospho- rus, as constituent elements. If their daily food, derived as it is from the soil, lacked either sulphur or phosphorus, must not this radical defect in their nourishment soon induce weakness and disease, and finally result in premature cfeath ? To prevent consequences so disastrous and so obvious, nature refuses to organize plants without the presence in the soil, in an available form, of those peculiar atoms adapted alike to the wants of vegeta- ble and animal vitality. This wise provision should be carefully studied by every one who desires to enjoy sound health and a long and happy life. Most of "the ills that flesh is heir to," as well as most maladies of plants, have their origin in the violation of nature's laws.

The growth and constitutional vigor of all living beings, not less than the revolution of the earth on its axis, are governed by immutable laws. One of these appears to be that an atom of carbon (charcoal) shall not perform the function of an atom of iron ; nor can an atom of iron perform the office of an atom of carbon, or that of any other element concerned in the organ- ism of plants and animals.

24 Doc. No. 20.

There are only some fifteen kinds of elementary bodies used by nature in forming every vegetable and animal substance, produced on the farm, in the orchard, or in the garden-.

The science of rural economy consists in the systematic study of atoms, and of the laws by which they are governed, whether they exist in solid or crumbling rocks, in loose earths, in vegetable or animal mould, in fermenting manure, in the living tissues and cells of organized beings, or in the form of invisible gases diffused through the atmosphere. Every product of agri- cultural labor is either a vegetable or an animal substance ; and in its pro- duction, not an atom of new matter is called into existence ; nor is it possible to annihilate an atom when it decays.

In the language of science, all matter which is neither vegetable nor ani- mal, including air and water, is mineral. All minerals are either solids, like sand, clay, and lime ; or liquids like water, or gases like common air. The farmer deals largely with atoms in each of these forms ; and hence he should be familiar with the several sciences which treat of the natural phe- nomena witnessed in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. He should know that plants alone subsist on mineral or disorganized food — that if there were no plants in the ocean nor on the land, neither marine nor land animals could have a being. In the absence of all vegetation^ it is obvious that all animals must be carnivorous, or cease to consume organized aliment. Being wholly dependent on mutual destruction for the means of subsistence, every day would diminish the aggregate supply of food, and the last animal would soon die of starvation.

From the above reasoning, it is plain that vegetable life is* older on this planet than animal life ; and that plants may have flourished thousands of years before the lowest type of being which depended wholly on organized food for subsistence, was created. It will also be seen that the line of de- markation between animals and plants is well defined, by the fact that the latter can organize the elements of all vegetable and animal substances into compound bodies, which the former cannot do. All plants produce and in- crease organized matter ; all animals consume and diminish the quantity of organized food.*

CHAPTER II.

What the Country has lost by Impoverishing its Soils.

Taking the census of 1840 as the basis of the calculation, and adding no more than the usual increase, including immigrants, the number now employed in agriculture in the United States does not vary much from five millions. The number of acres which they cultivate is not known. In the State of New York, thorc are some twelve million acres of improved land, which includes all meadows and enclosed pastures. This area employs about five hundred thousand laborers; being an average of twenty-four acres to the hand. At this ratio, the number of acres of improved land in the United States is one hundred and twenty millions. But New York is an

* Sec Duma«' Balnnco of Organic Nature

Doc. No. 20. 25

old and more densely populated State than an average in the Union ; and probably twenty-five acres per head is a juster estimate for the whole coun- try. At this rate, the aggregate is one hundred and twenty-five millions. Of these improved lands, it is confidently believed that at least four-fifths are now suffering deterioration in a greater or less degree.

The fertility of some, particularly in the planting States, is passing rapidly away, in others the progress of exhaustion is so slow as hardly to be observed by the cultivators themselves. To keep within the truth, the annual income from the soil may be said to be diminished ten cents an acre, on one hun- dred million acres, or four-fifths of the whole.

This loss of income is ten millions of dollars, and equal to sinking a capi- tal of one hundred and sixty-six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars a year, paying six per cent, annual interest. That improved farming lands may justly be regarded as capital and a fair investment when paying six per cent, interest, and perfectly safe, no one will deny. This deterioration is not unavoidable, for thousands of skillful farmers have taken fields, poor in point of natural productiveness, and, instead of diminishing their fertility, have added ten cents an acre to their annual income, over and above all expenses. If this wise and improving system of rotation tillage and husbandry were universally adopted, or applied to the one himdred mil- lion acres now being exhausted, it would be equivalent to creating each year an additional capital of one hundred and sixty-six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars, and placing it in permanent real estate, where it would pay six per cent, annual interest. For all practical purposes, the difference between the two systems is three hundred and thirty-three million three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars a year, to the country.

There is another view of this important subject which is worthy of pro- found consideration. Of the twelve million acres of improved land in the State of New York, one million are so cultivated, as to become richer from year to year. These improving^ soils are in the hands of forty thousand cultivators, who take and read agricultural journals, and nobly sustain the State and county societies of that commonwealth.

Three million acres of .^he twelve millions are so managed as barely to hold their own in point of fertility. These lands belong to a class of fawn- ers who do as well as they know from personal observation, and seeing how reading men improve their estates and domestic animals.

Eight million acres are in the hands of three hundred thousand persons, who still adhere to the colonial practice of extracting from the virgin soil all it will yield, so long as it will pay expenses to crop it, and then leave it in a thin poor pasture for a term of years. Some of these impoverished farms, which, seventy-five years ago, produced from twenty to thirty bushels of wheat on an average per acre, now yield only from five to eight bushels. In an exceedingly interesting work entitled "American Husbandry," published in London in 1775, and written by an American, the following remarks may be found on page 98, vol. i. " Wheat in many parts of the province (New York) yields a larger produce than is common in England. Upon good lands about Albany, where the climate is the coldest in the country, they sow two bushels and better upon an acre, and reap from twenty to forty ; the latter quantity, however, is not often had, but from twenty to thirty are common; and with such bad husbandry as would not yield the like in Eng-

26 Doe. No. 20.

land, and much less in Scotland. This is owing to the richness and fresh- ness of the land."*

According to the State census of 1845, Albany county now produces only seven and a half bushels of wheat per acre, although its farmers are on tide water and near the capital of the St?,te, with a good home market, and possess every facility for procuring the most valuable fertilizers. Dutchess county, also on the Hudson River, produces an average of only five bushels per acre ; Columbia six bushels ; Rensselaer eight ; Westchester seven ; which is higher than the average of soils that once gave a return larger than the wheat lands of England even with "bad husbandry."

Fully to renovate the eight million acres of partially exhausted lands in the State of New York, will cost at least an average of twelve dollars and a half per acre, or an aggregate of one hundred million dollars. It is not an easy task to replace all the bone-earth, potash, sulphur, magnesia, and organized nitrogen in mould consumed in a field which has been unwisely cultivated fifty or seventy-five years. Phosphorus is not an abundant mineral anywhere, and his sub-soil is about the only resource of the hus- bandman, after his surface soil has lost most of its phosphates. The three hundred thousand persons that cultivate these eight million acres of impoverished soils annually produce less by twenty-five dollars each than they would if the land had not been injured.

The aggregate of this loss to the State and the world is seven million five hundred thousand dollars per annum, or more than seven per cent, interest on what it will cost ;to renovate the deteriorated soils. There is no possible escape from this oppressive tax on labor of seven millioa five hundred thousand dollars, but to improve the land, or run off and leave it.

That the latter has been done to a large extent is shown by comparing the population in rural districts, at the census of 1830, with that of 1840. In nearly half the towns in the State, population had decreased notwith- standing the rapid growth of cities and villages, demanding an increase of farm laborers to supply the mere local markets. The canals of New York have operated to hasten the exhaustion of its arable lands; just as a rail- road to California would aid in extracting gold dust from its now unwashed sands. While the canals and railroads of New York convey a thousand tons of the few precious atoms in the surface of the earth which can alone form bread and meat, to tide water, they do not carry back from tide water one ton of the raw material for making crops of any kind. A million tons of human food pass down the Mississippi, where one ton of the elements of such food ascends the "father of waters."

It will be seen, on referring to the census of 1840, that the five States of Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia, employed at that time one million thirteen thousand four hundred and sixty-three persons in agriculture. Of this number Maryland had sixty-nine thousand eight hundred and 'fifty- one; Virginia three hundred and eighteen thou- sand seven hundred and seventy-one: North Carolina two hundred and seventeen thousand and ninety-five ; South Carolina one hundred and ninety- eight thousand three hundred and sixty-three : and Georgia tw; hundred and nine thousand three hundred and eighty-three.

It is a statistical question of considerable importance, to determine how much less these laborers, and the mules, horses, and oxen which they work,

Doc. No. 20. 27

annually produce, than they would, had no acre of arable lands in these States, so highly favored by climate and fertility, been damaged in the least by improper tillage. The difference in the cost of making crops on poor land and on good land is much greater than is generally supposed. The shrewd farmers of Massachusetts prefer giving sixty cents a bushel for western corn rather than grow this grain on their less fertile soils : while the corn-growers of Indiana and Illinois are glad to sell their crops made on rich land at twenty cents a bushel. From these facts, is not the infer- ence plain and satisfactory, that it costs three times • more to produce a bushel of corn on poor than on rich land ? To do full justice to this in- teresting problem, by what means and to what extent the soils of the five States above named have been injured, would fill a volume.

A residence of more than two years in the most southern of these States, connected with its agricultural press, and devoting much time to the study of soils and their, products, warrants the writer in expressing an opinion on the weight of evidence collected from all sources within his reach. The annual loss om the labor of eaeh hand an*l mule is believed to be thirty dollars. This estimate is too high for some plantations and too low for others. The only reason why so many slaves have been sent south during the last twenty-five years (and thousands out of Georgia) is, that the labor of a person is worth twice as much to cultivate rich, fresh land, as poor, old land. If the estimate of a yearly loss of thirty dollars on each hand and the domestic animals which he works be not too high, then the aggregate exceeds thirty millions of dollars.

This is equivalent to having sunk a productive capital invested in farming lands at a cheap rate, of five hundred millions of dollars, yielding six per sent, annual interest. While England and France have derived hundreds of millions in profit and revenue, from the tobacco and cotton exported from Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, and Maryland, a large share of all the pro- ceeds received from these staples, which have so desolated the earth over immense districts, has left these old impoverished States, with their emigrat- ing citizens, never to return.

This unwise system of tillage is extending rapidly in the United States. Manufacturers, merchants, and mechanics often shift their settled policy, when they see a profit in making a change. But whoever expects millions of isolated farmers to change suddenly their practices, ideas, and systems of culture and husbandry, shows that he has not labored twenty years to sub- stitute an improving for an exhausting system of field culture. At a fair estimate, there are at this time two million seven hundred and forty-one thousand nine hundred and sixty-six persons employed in agriculture in the fifteen slave-holding States. Before the study of rural economy as a science will become as popular as the study of politics, law, and medicine, the South will have at work in the field a force of five millions of operatives. Who does not see that the wise and skillful employment of this vast power of production is a matter of inestimable consequence to all the planting States and to unborn millions who must dig their daily bread from impoverished soils, if the mighty work of land exhaustion is to increase and extend as population spreads over the cotton, tobacco, and sugar-growing portions of the Union? Propagated by buds instead of seeds, the sugar-cane will be found, like the potatoe plant, less able to withstand the customary abuses of nature's laws than tobacco, corn, wheat, and cotton plants. But all these are suffering in vital force and constitutional vigor by reason of their defect-

28 Doc. No. 20.

ive food in partially exhausted soils. Any living being may habitually take a very little poison into its system without destroying life. Pursue the practice of poisoning only to a very small degree, and it will tell in the course of a few generations in strange, new, and incomprehensible maladies. An instructive and useful book might be written on the diseases of cultivated plants ; to say nothing of those of domestic animals. Mildew, mould in cheese, rust on wheat and cotton, and the fungi believed by naturalists and botanists to be so injurious to potatoes, are all in a good degree, like other vegetable creations, subject to the control of human industry and science.

If we visit the farmers of the North West, we shall find the popular feeling developing itself after this fashion : " Let us construct railroads and canals, improve our navigable rivers and lake harbors, purchase the best farm imple- ments, and then employ all our capital and energies in transforming every atom in the soil which will make grain, provisions, and wool, into those marketable commodities, and send them to distant cities and nations for consumption."

This agricultural and commercial enterprise is complacently regarded as the proper development of the agricultural resources of a new country! Although the inevitable results of this practice may be seen in each of the old thirteen States, as in the valleys of the Mohawk and Hudson, yet it is confidently believed by sanguine farmers that the truly rich soils of the west are inexhaustible. Whoever will carefully examine this great national question, of taking everything out of the land and putting nothing back, must be satisfied that no other than the most disastrous consequences can follow. The number of laborers employed in this simple operation increases at the rate of two hundred thousand a year, in the United States.

CHAPTER III.

By what Processes the Earth is impoverished.

Tiiere are three principal ways in which the natural fruitfulness of the earth may be seriously impaired.

1. By removing its natural products : as when a prairie is annually mown for a series of years, and all the hay removed, and no manure or other fertil- izer returned. In Europe, where forest culture is practiced, experience has shown that to remove the leaves that annually fall upon the ground to rot and form mould over the roots of trees, is sure to impoverish the land and injure its valuable products. These leaves, as well as prairie grass, contain both earthy minerals called inorganic matter, and combustible elements usually designated by the term organic mattor. In burning over prairies, the latter portion of the plants consumed is alone removed from the soil; their axhcx remain on the ground where the plants grew. Pastures are deteriorated by the loss of the grass carried oil' in the stomachs of domestic animals.

2. Soils are impoverished by tillage without cropping, or removing any plant wijatcver. No fact in agriculture is more important than this: All tillage is purely an artificial and withal a most unnatural operation. Nature never ploughs, nor harrows, nor hoes the earth to promote the growth of vegetation. Her highest productiveness is the result of laws, whrch every

Doc. No. 20. 29

farmer should carefully study and learn to follow, in the renovation of cul- tivated fields.

Although all tillage is a mechanical process, yet its effects are both chemical and physical on the soil. So far as the chemical results of tillage are concerned, they are quite independent of all crops and other plants. It is not so easy a task as some may suppose to explain, in a few plain words, the several changes wrought in the mould and inorganic part of soils, "by the plough, spade, and hoe. The mechanical and physical effects of tfilage are very obvious to every cultivator. The earth is mellowed — ren- dered exceedingly porous and admirably fitted not only to absorb atmo- spheric air, and all gaseous bodies, but to condense them in the innumerable pores of the friable mass. The same causes which increase the fertility of a fallowed field exhaust the soil, if long continued, although no crop should be grown upon it. If, however, a crop of weeds, grass, peas, or clover be grown and allowed to die and rot on the ground or be ploughed in, the soil will be enriched by the operation. But if a field be annually ploughed and hoed, as for a crop of corn, tobacco, cottsn, or sugar-cane for twenty-five years, and no plant whatever be allowed to grow on its surface, the mechan- ical and chemical changes, associated as they must be with the leachings and washings of innumerable rains, would result in removing from the sur- face of the earth nearly or quite all of its vegetable mould and the soluble mineral food of plants. To test this principle in nature, suppose a farmer were to apply twenty-five loads of well rotted stable manure upon an acre of land, and plough, harrow, and hoe the ground twenty-five years, as for crops of corn or cotton, but plant nothing and permit neither grass nor weeds to grow thereon. Would any of the dissolved elements of this ma- nure remain that length of time in the surface soil? Certainly not. If manure will decompose and disappear like wood consumed in a fire-place, may not vegetable mould do so likewise ? And if the mineral known as common salt and salts of lime and potash w$l readily dissolve on the ground in rain water, and pa&s in a state of solution deep ' int® the earth and re- appear in springs, wells, and rivulets, may not similar minerals naturally in the soil, and rendered soluble by tillage, be. also dissolved and washed out of the mellow ground into the compact sub-soil, or into swamps, rivers, and the ocean?

The principal object of ploughing and hoeing is to increase the quantity of available food for the crop ; but while the plants are present in the soil and growing, it is by no means certain that all the manure or other fertil- izers applied to the land, or all the elements of the crop naturally in the soil, enter the roots of cultivated plants, and appear at the harvest.

Under certain circumstances, the loss by leaching and solar influences is very large. In producing small crops of corn, cotton, wheat, and other plants, the waste of raw material is far greater in proportion to the harvest, than in large crops whose roots and foliage cover the surface both in and above the soil universally. Small corn or cotton plants, and these quite distant one from another, greatly favor the volatilization of all volatile sub- stances and the washing away of all soluble elements.

8. Tillage and cropping exhaust land faster than it can be done in any other way short of carting off the surface soil in a mass. The degree of injury inflicted by this operation is very variable : not only on different fields, and soils, but on the same surface at different times and seasons. A light, open, sandy soil that has no clay foundation will not bear ploughing

30 Doc. No. £0. ,

and cropping so long, with so small deterioration, as the same soil with a clay sub-soil. Light, sandy soils abound in North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia, and South Carolina, and most of these when fresh yield fair crops. Their red clay lands are not so easily worked, but are more enduring and generally more productive.

The limestone soils of the Cherokee country, of Tennessee, Kentucky, Missouri, and other States, are altogether different from any formed from the debris of granitic, metamorphic, and sand rocks. It is impossible to form an intelligent opinion of the exhaustion of a soil by any given amount of tillage and cropping, without knowing something of the parent rocks from which the earth was derived, and something of its physical and chemical properties. A knowledge of the principles of geology and chemistry is invaluable to one who desires to understand in advance what are the natural capabilities of any arable land ; and what elements of crops it is most likely to have in too small a quantity.

i It often happens that a soil partakes very little of the character of the rock that lies but twenty or thirty inches below its surface.

This is owing to the circumstance that a different kind of rock has fur- nished the earthy matter deposited above the solid strata. In several counties in Western New York, trhe soft Medina sandstone has been com- minuted and carried by tidal currents, glaciers, icebergs, or some other moving force, many miles southward, and spread over lime-rocks, hundreds of feet higher than the parent sandstone, both geologically and topographi- cally. Although resting on lime-rock, these soils often lack lime to a degree.

The durability of a soil is governed, in an eminent degree, by its texture and hygrometric properties.

Tenacious clay lands retain fertilizing salts with peculiar and remarkable affinity. When well drained and thoroughly tilled, they yield up their nutritive constituents as fast as is profitable. Where one has but a small surface to operate on, the application! of clay to sandy soils is very useful. The deeper and more thoroughly ©no cultivates his land, removes all that it produces, and makes no adequate restitution, the faster will he impair the natural capa- bilities of his soil. No matter with what .skill and science a farmer extracts immense crops from his fields ; the larger the amount of pota-sh, soda, mag- nesia, soluble fiint, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, and organized nitrogen, carried off in crops, the poorer his land must become, unless a part of all these ingredients be returned to the earth whence they were taken.

It is impossible to say, with any approximation to the truth, in the present infancy of agricultural science, how much of the inorganic food of plants may be safely removed from year to year in grass, milk, meat, or grain, in cotton or tobacco, from an acre of common fair land, without detriment. A little of dissolved sand, lime, potash, magnesia, sulphur, mould, and phos- phorus may |be spared from the poorest soils, without injury ; while some so abound in the elements of crops as to furnish as amount twenty times larger, without exhausting the supply of earthy minerals. This point will hefarther discussed in the next chapter.

Doc. No. 20. 31

CHAPTER IV.

What is the available Capacity of the Farming Lands in the United States to feed and clothe the Human Family ?

No question, either in rural or political economy, is more important than the above. What the soil can do, and what it cannot do, are questions of fact, about which every American citizen should be well informed.* That the principal wealth of the United States lies in its vast agricultural capa- bilities, is apparent to all; but this general appreciation of an important truth fails to impart to the understanding any definite idea of the capacity of any given farm to produce grain, cotton, or provisions, by any system of tillage and cropping.

As it is a law of nature that mankind shall increase in numbers, and consume a corresponding increase of food and raiment, it is obvious that no system of agriculture that does not improve the soil a little in the lapse of ten or twenty years, can be a wise system for the community at large. Nor is it, upon the whole, of any advantage to a farmer or planter, to work tip the raw material of cultivated plants in a virgin soil, in the course of a few years, and then abandon his exhausted fields and clear new ones.

That fortunes have been realized by operations of this kind, is not denied ; but no planter who has followed this popular practice has made more money thereby than he might have done by so cultivating the soil as to increase, instead of diminishing, its natural fertility. It may be conceded that his fresh lands cost him not over three or five dollars an acre ; and that, after one thousand acres have been so impoverished as not to pay a profit on their cultivation, another thousand acres may be had at the cost of the first; still it can be- shown, both by practice and theory, that less profit is attainable by this course than by a system of planting founded ©n scientific principles.

If the cultivator had to apply to his soil one hundred pounds of manure or other fertilizing matter, for every one hundred pounds harvested and re- moved in the crop, then to wear out the virgin earth would give one vastly more ready cash than to attempt to feed plants with all the atoms consumed in their growth. Fortunately, no such necessity exists. In the wise econo- my of nature, it is not probable that more than an average of one pound in ten of the dry weight of cultivated plants, including their roots, stems, leaves, and seeds, is formed of matter which existed as a part of the solid substance of the soil in which the plants grew. Several experiments have been made by the writer for the purpose of determining what percentage of wheat, corn, and potatoe crops is composed of atoms derived from mould, silica (samd), lime, potash, &c, extracted from the soil ; and what part was derived from water, carbonic acid, and other gaseous elements known to exist in

* We greatly need additional experiments to test in a reliable manner both the natural capabilities cf soils and the productive power of different fertilizers. The simple fac* that three hundred pounds of guano often give a gain of twelve hundred p«unds in corn and six hundred in wheat crops is foil of promise in favor of concentrating manures. In hauling out one hundred loads of barn-yard manure, the farmer carries on an average eighty loads of water. Water is often very valuable, but it will hardly pay to haul it half a mile or more, in a cart ©r wagon, to irrigate a field. The great weight and bulk of manure must be got rid of, without impairing its productive power.

32 Doc. No. 20.

the atmosphere. Wishing to repeat these researches on a larger scale before publishing, no account of them has been made public.

The science of feeding plants is in its infancy ; and very little public en- couragement has been held out to any one to devote his time and money to investigations of this character. The little, attention paid to the feeding of wheat in England has resulted in raising the average product from sixteen to thirty-two bushels per acre. If a small share of the talent aritl public patronage of this country could be turned to the study of vegetable and animal physiology in their connection with farm economy, and to chemistry, entomology, agricultural geology, and meteorology, unquestionably the average of our wheat, corn, and cotton crops would soon be doubled. The most important point is to learn what food, and what quantity per acre, will yield the largest annual profit. In addition to this, it is desirable to know what sources of supply of the raw material for making crops, so far as it is lacking in the soil, can be most economically resorted to by the farmer.

His sources of supply are numerous ; among others, the subsoil and the atmosphere may be named as always available on the poorest lands. It is very rare, if ever, that a soil is so sterile that when three inches deep it cannot be made six ; and if six inches deep, it may not be made twelve. If the reader will reflect on the facts of the case for a moment, he will be satis- fied that the same resources in the earth and atmosphere, in rains, dews, solar light, and heat, which produce a little mould on the surface, extract a little lime, potash, magnesia, and soluble flint from the subsoil, may rea- sonably be expected to yield something more of all these elements of fertility, if they are skillfully husbanded from year to year. But, if these elements are all sold and sent off the farm; or if wasted thereon, no matter how, an increase of productiveness is impossible, unless guano or manure from abroad is bought for home consumption. Vegetable mould can only be increased by growing plants ; and even then, different plants form mould, when they decay, of very unequal value in its adaptation to the peculiar wants of crops. As the science of feeding plants rests on precisely the same principles as that of feeding animals, and as plants alone have the power to subsist on disorganized minerals, such as air, water, sand, and lime, it is all important to grow such fertilizing and renovating vegetables as will best furnish nutri- ment to the plants to be cultivated for market. Thus, one thousand pounds of broomsedge, rotting on an acre, vail yield mould far inferior to that of a like weight of pea-vines. In some respects, the sedge will have the advan- tage. It wiH supply more soluble siliea than an equal weight of the steins, leaves, roots, and seeds of the pea plant, but much less of sulphur, phospho- rus, and organized azote or nitrogen. Theoretically, the slow rotting of broomsedge, followed by the more rapid decay of pea-haulm, will prepare a soil for wheat or corn, better than to have it entirely free from either sedge or pea-vine mould. Different forest leaves furnish mould as unlike in value as that formed from rotting cabbages and decaying pine wood. But if a ton of cabbages or clover will form a mass of rich mould, it will require Something better than very poor land to grow either clover or cabbage. They are both rich in sulphur, phosphorus, and nitrogen, elements that do not abound in sterile soils.

It is difficult to see Iioav one can fairly begin to comprehend the natural capabilities of American ^oils, before he n familiar with the science of me- teorology and the philosophy of manures. An acre of land lying ii the latitude of Washington and St. Louifl has the capacity to produce nearly

Doc. No. 20. 33

double the food for man or beast that an equal area in the centre of Great- Britain possesses; assuming the chemical composition and physical charac- ter of the soils to be alike in both countries ; the fall of rain alike, and the only difference being in. the length of seasons and a higher mean tempera- ture and more sunshine in America than in England. There are few, if *» any, plants which equal our maize or Indian corn, in yielding a large \ quantity of bread on a small surface. In England, it is impracticable to | grow one good crop of this cereal in a year. In the District of Columbia, | on choice land, nearly, if not quite, two crops can be made in a season. Sup- pose the object was to produce milk (an exceedingly valuable article of food), ; not only can we grow twice as much corn for soiling cows on an acre, under j American sunshine, as can be raised in Great Britain, but after frost sets \ in and before it is time to plant corn in the spring, a crop of winter wheat, rye, or barley can be two-thirds grown in Virginia, and harvested in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas. An acre of land in central Georgia will bcth feed and clothe two persons as well, and more economically, than the same area of soil of equal fertility will feed and clothe one person in the State of Maine. In the latter, only one crop can be made in a year ; in the former, three can be grown, and two of them will contain an extraordinary weight of organized matter.

It must be remembered that the same high degree of solar light and heat which greatly favors the rapid as well as the prolonged growth of vegetation, promotes also in an equal degree the consumption of mould, and the exhaus-

,'tion of the soil, if its crops are all removed, or if its tillage be unwisely directed. On comparing the fall of rain in Georgia with that of New York, the writer finds that as much water often falls, in twenty minutes, in the Southern as in forty minutes in the Northern States. Some thirteen inches of water fell in the month of July, 1849, in the city of Augusta, Georgia. The mechanical washing of cultivated fields at the South is an evil of no in- considerable magnitude. To remedy this, good planters resort to horizon- tal ditching around hills, or on their slopes, so as to convey by a gentle inclination the surface water off, without cutting deep gulleys in the earth. Many of these conduits are constructed with commendable skill and scien-

! tific engineering, guided by a spirit or water level. The object sought is

I not to have the ditch so level Yvith the horizon as to fill in a heavy rain and permit the water to break over its bank on the lower side ; nor with such an inclination from the upper to the lower part of the side hill as to create a washing current in the ditch itself. It is also indispensable that these ditches be not too far apart. Too much care can hardly be taken of the soil to prevent its injury in any way. It is hard to persuade men that the

, intrinsic value of arable land is wholly independent of its market price — that to damage a soil which costs three dollars per acre is as injurious to \

i society as it would be if it cost thirty dollars per acre. |

The common interest which all have in the enduring fruitfulness of the J

earth has received very little attention in this country. Nothing is more I

certain than the fact that a district or State which exports largely the'things j

which nature demands to form breadstuff's and provisions, must sooner or I

'j later export also some of its consumers of bread and meat. For the tea % years preceding 1846, Ireland exported more bushels of grain than all the United States.*

* See McCulloch's Commercial Dictionary, and the official returns of this ecuntif in a table in this Report. .- ^ . . .., . ;>

r

34 Doc. No. 20.

Although much of the grain sent from Ireland was oats, all farmers know that this is quite an exhausting crop. Nor did the people of that ill-fated island restore to their potatoe fields all the atoms removed in crops. Ilenoe the plant failed to a signal degree ; famine ensued, hundreds of thousands perished, and still more fled to England, Scotland, and America. Probably no State in the Union has done so much in the way of exportiDg its fertil- izing atems to other States and foreign nations, and wasting them at home, as Virginia. Next to New York, she has the largest number employed in agriculture. The practical result of this policy has been that she has lost more farm laborers, more citizens and more capital removed with these emigrating citizens, than any other State in the Union. This must always be the case the world over, except where the overflow, of great rivers, or other means, serves to renovate the soil, exhausted by excessive cropping, , or bad husbandry. The fact should be universally understood that a State can feed and clothe a population ten times larger at home than it can abroad. This result occurs from the circumstance that the peculiar atoms, indispensable to form food and clothing, exist in the soil only to a very limited extent. If this were not the case, England would not send hundreds and thousands of ships to distant islands and coasts to gather the dung of sea-birds solely to increase her annual crop3. If no fertilizers were wasted in England, this expense need not be incurred.* Belgium sustains a popu- lation of three hundred and thirty-six to the square mile. With a popula- tion equally dense, Virginia would contain twenty-two million seventy-five thousand two hundred souls. Belgium, by the attention paid to saving manures, and with a climate inferior to that of the " Old Dominion," is able to export no inconsiderable quantity of beef, mutton, pork, butter, cheese^ and some grain. It has nearly three million four hundred and twenty-two. thousand five hundred and seventy-four hectares of land.f Of this, one million seven hundred and seventeen thousand three hundred and fifty-four are arable, and six hundred and forty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-two are in wood and forests. Prairies and meadows cover an area of four hundred and thirty-nine thousand five hundred and ninety-four hectares. Wasto lands in uncultivated tracts four hundred and twenty-eight thousand two hundred and ninety-one. In his "Agricultural Survey of Flanders," Mr. Ratcliff says that the dairy-men keep their cow stables the year round as near as may be at the temperature of the month of May. Cattle (neat) are fatted and sold when two years old. The averago number so disposed of, every year for fourteen years,, was eight hun- dred and ninety-eight thousand and seventy-six. The soil in Flanders is naturally poor, and the maxim is, "Without stall-fed cattle no manure,

* For all practical purposes, fertilizing atoms are eternal ; and so far as they are needed to form the products of rural industry, they should be retained in the service of man a thousand years. The whole system cf crops forming manure, and manure form- ing crops, implies that there should be no waste of tho least abundant elements of cul- tivated plants. An atom of potash, which aids in organizing the elements of water and eorbon into starch in a kernel of corn in 1850, may perform a similar function every summer for the next one hundred years, if it be carefully preserved when it escapes from the body of the animal that eats the oorn. In all its mutations of position and chemi- cal combination, it can never be aught beaides an atom of potash. Being so indestructible and valuable, why annually throw away potash enough to form a thousand mfllion bushels of corn in the United States? What becomes of that contained in all the food consumed by twenty-two million people m this country? This is but one item of our lt>6S of this and many other fertilizers.

f A hectare is a little less than two and a half acres (2.47).

WMflOMKVMiVi

Doc. No. 20. 35

and without manure no crops.' ' To say nothing of the keep of dairy-cows, ■working oxen, horses, sheep, and swine, the peoplfe themselves equal one to every arable acre in the kingdom. Speaking of the " agricultural produce and* practice" of Belgium, Mr. McCulloch remarks: "Corn (wheat), flax, hemp, and timber constitute the most important materials of the agricultural wealth of Belgium. The soil artijicialb; enriched, produces commonly more than double the quantity of corn required for the consumption of its inha- bitants, which is computed at six millions of hectolitres (each two and quarter bushels) per annum." This gives an aggregate of ;-, five hundred thousand bushels of wheat. The six hundred and forty-nine thousand nine hundred and fifty-two hectares (over one million five h;.v thousand acres) in woods and cultivated forests, yield a large profit in tim- ber. The fact is* the more worthy of note because of all the extravagant abuses of the bounties of Providence in this country, a reckless waste of timber is the least excusable. Timber is about as necessary as bread ; and it requires a vastly longer time to grow a good oak than it does to fell one or grow a crop of corn. There are small forests of black locusts in this, country which yield from twenty -five to fifty dollars worth of railroad ties per acre a year, with no very expensive culture. The grand secret of Belgian farming lies in their producing, keeping from loss, and good sense in applying manures. Of all civilized nations, we pay least attention to this part of good husbandry. Not one farmer or planter in a thousand appreciates the fact that the more fat cattle, fat hogs, or sheep he keeps,. the more grain, tobacco, or cotton he can make on his farm. It is stated, on the above reliable authority, that the average for fourteen years of fat cattle sold in Belgium, was eight hundred and ninety-eight thousand and seventy-six head a year. The essential object in making so much beef (not a little of which is consumed in London-), was the production of ma- nure. The liquid excretions of a single cow sell at two pounds (ten dollars) a year.

Virginia sends to Massachusetts about a million bushels of corn per annum. If, in place of exporting this grain, it was fed to hogs and neat cattle and their meat exported, the manure derived from the grain con- sumed would give to the corn-growers of that State five hundred thousand bushels more corn in 1850 than they will now harvest.' By pursuing the Belgian system a few years, the fertility of Virginia soils would be three- fold greater than it now is. The State could then spare more breadstuffs and tobacco than it now does without injury to the land. A rich man can spend more money from his large income than a poor man can spend from a small one, and not become bankrupt.*

* How to extract generous crops of grain, tobacco, aid corn from a soil, with the least injury and the greatest economy, is a study which investigates the following among Other questions of fact: —

When ten bushels of corn are consumed by fattening hog.?, cattle, cr sheep, and all the solid and liquid manure formed by the grain is saved, how much additional corn, with the aid of the stalks and cobs well rotted that grow with the ten bushels of corn, -will these fertilizers produce? I have said in the text that a gain of five bushels may be realized, but under the most favorable circumstances a gain of twenty is attainable. Manure enables plants to draw more aliment from the atmosphere avid the earth, than, they could command without such aid. it is precisely this function in what aro called renovating crops, such as clover and grass at the North, peas, grass, rye, and barley at y* the South, that increases the natural" productiveness of iand. Clover and peas aaver ereate a particle of new matter. They consume sun-light and beat, water, atmospheric gases and minerals in the surface and subsoil, to organize their root o, stoma, leaves, and

36 Doc. No. 20.

All business men occasionally take an account of stock ; all manufacturers estimate the value of the raw material consumed in the course of a year's operations but the manufacturers of agricultural staples. The latter seem to think that nature forms sixty bushels of corn or thirty of wheat from nothing. If this were so, then all soils should be alike productive and manure of no value. This is not the fact ; and the production of good manure is an indispensable part of good husbandry. Hence the keeping of domestic animals can never be dispensed with to advantage, till the human family reach a density of population of about one person to a half acre. After that, an animal belonging to the genus homo (man) will furnish all needful fertilizers. With all our pride, we should remember that we are but "dust."

To show the capacity of arable land to produce breadstuff's, and not at- tempt to reach the extreme limit which is unknown, it is enough to say that our climate is equal to the yield of thirty bushels of wheat and eighty of corn per acre, provided the plants are properly fed. How should a farmer feed corn plants on his soil which is equal to the production of fifteen bushels per acre, so that the same will, in the course of a few years, grow crops five times larger?

To do this without going off the field for fertilizers is the end to be at- tained. "Without now going into the details of corn culture, which will be discussed under its appropriate head, it may be stated that, if all the stalks, blades, cobs, and corn in the shape of manure, or the stalks and cobs rotted without being consumed and the corn eaten to furnish manure, be annually restored to the land, it will increase rapidly in productiveness. Allowing one bushel to plant five acres, the one-fifth of a bushel of seed placed in the soil will receive the fertilizers derived from fifteen bushels of corn in the previous crop. At this rate, it is plain that the vital germ in each seed will have the benefit not only of all the nutritive mutter stored up in that particular seed, but what is contained in seventy -five other seeds that formed the manure. Nothing is more obvious than the fact that the aliment in a seed, whether of cotton, wheat, or corn, nourishes the germ of the growing plant. Hence the fertilizing atoms derived from seventy-five other seeds, whether these atoms have passed through the system of any animal or not, will naturally develop more, longer, and larger roots m the plant, than it would without such aid.

These more numerous and more extended radicles enable the plant to imbibe food from a greater depth and from a wider and broader surface than it could otherwise command. Now, if we assume that the stalks, cobs, and corn of the previous crop of fifteen bushels are able to produce as much matter a second time, it will be seen that the second crop has a double ad- vantage over the first. Whatever may be the positive gain, the fanner has only to repeat the operation, as is done in Flanders, to bring up his soil to the production of \ery targe crops of corn. It is true that one hundred pounds of food of any hind eaten by an animal yield generally only about Forty pounds of dry excretions : nearly sixty per cent, being discharged from the system through the lungs ^y constant respiration, and a little by sensible «>r insensible perspiration. Bui s<> much as goes into the atmosphere in

this way, rains and deWS bring to the earth again; and plants seldom lack

6eods. These totting will feed cotton, wheat, corn, or potato* plaata in a dire< t- and eeoBOinieaJ way. Deep and thorough tillage promotes the luxuriant- growth if ve^eta- ikii and the enrieatog ofih« soil, it its product* be widely hwtanded,

i

Doc. No. 20. 37

Carbonic acid, beyond what good stable manure will supply. The atoms discharged from the system through the kidneys cannot be dispensed with, no matter what animal eats the products of the soil.

Viewed as a philosophical question, the well-established fact that one hundred pounds of the dung of birds often produce three hundred pounds of wheat and five hundred of corn, is one of the most interesting m nature. ( Place man and his most urgent wants out of view, and why should one hun- / dred pounds of gypsum ever augment a crop of clover one thousand or two thousand pounds ? This salt of lime contains but eighteen and a half pounds of pure sulphur, yet it enables clover plants to extract twice that amount of .this mineral from the earth, under favorable circumstances, by extending then- roots deep into the sub-soil. How plants grow, and the art of feeding them as well as animals, are questions full of interest as matters of scientific research, irrespective of any practical importance that attaches to agri- culture.

All cultivated plants and all domestic animals, not less than the soil, are susceptible of indefinite and very valuable improvement. Every advance of this kind virtually increases the productive power of the earth and of manual labor. But the most important improvement of all is to im- prove the farmer himself, that he may be able to read and understand the immutable laws of nature and uniformly obey the same, as they exist in the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. His profession is a most intel- lectual one, and there is no good reason why the cultivator of American soil should not be the most thoroughly educated business man in the world. Great improvements are attainable ; and if Congress and State Legislatures will render a little assistance in the way of collecting, annually, reliable statistics, that we may go to the people with facts and figures the truth of which none can gainsay, one hundred per cent, can soon be added to the productive industry of five millions of farm laborers. There is an undeve- loped power of production in American soil and muscle, and above all in American mind, which ought no longer to be neglected. Although the science of human progress is in its infancy, yet the little that has been achieved within the last thirty years, and mainly by the study of natural phenomena and the application of the knowledge so acquired to all the purposes of civilized life, promises a tenfold larger harvest when science sh^ll direct the culture and economy of every farm in the Republic. Few are aware how much honest hard work is worse than thrown away by its unwise expenditure.

■ I > It

.4.

38 Doc. No. 20.

III.

•agricultural meteorology.

There are few sciences the study of which is more useful to the farmer than that of meteorology. A soil may contain all the atoms required to form a luxuriant crop, yet if the temperature of the ground, or of the air above it, be too low, vegetation makes no progress. Again, the earth and atmosphere may have a due„degree of warmth and light, as well as abound in all the food of plants in an available form, except water, and the absence of this element will be fatal to the hope-s of the husbandman.

Atmospheric air, light, heat, electricity, rain, dew, snow and frost, exert a controlling influence over the growth of all cultivated plants. A know- ledge of the natural laws by which these, generally invisible and imponder- able bodies, are governed, so far as researches have revealed them, is alike valuable and interesting. The atmosphere and the numerous phenomena of which it is the theatre should command more attention in this country than they hitherto have received, if we intend to keep pace with the pro- gress of physical science in Europe. To encourage the study of meteorology in its application to agriculture, is the object of this paper.

The Atmosphere is mainly composed of two distinct gases, which are invisible but not imponderable bodies, and everywhere .surround the planet like an ocean. It has a mean depth of some forty-five miles. The gases which form the air are called nitrogen and oxygen. According to the ac- curate analysis of dry, pure air, made by MM. Dumas and Boussingault, one hundred parts consist of 20.8 oxj^gen and 79.2 nitrogen'. These chemists found from two to five parts of carbonic acid in ten thousand of atmospheric air. Dr. Fresenius has ascertained that the proportion of ammonia in the atmosphere is one part in two millions, varying to one in three millions. Undoubtedly, there are many other volatile and gaseous bodies in the atmosphere, but in a state so extremely diluted and diffused as to escape all chemical tests. Sir Robert Kane found that sulphuretted hydrogen will pass through a thin piece of India-rubber into the atmosphere, against a pressure equal to fifty times the weight »f oommon air.

Gaseous compounds of phosphorus, chlorine, and sulphur, are constantly discharged from decaying animal and vegetable substances into the atmo- sphere.

It, is one of the laws peculiar to all gases, thai the presence of one in any given space does nol in the Least prevent Beveral others from oocupying the vacancies between atoms of gas that Beem to repel each other with sin- gular aversion. The facility with which the atmosphere takes up vapor, when water evaporates, is familiar to all. This capacity to hold immense quantities of water imbibed from the ocean, lal.es, rivers, the foliage of and Moist earth, in b volatile condition, to be distributed over broad

Doc. No. 20. 39

continents, is a -wonderful provision of nature. But the filling of the air with water like a wet sponge is less remarkable than the contrivance for squeezing the sponge, so to speak, and causing the diffused moisture to fall in gentle rains, snows and dews. The drying of the atmosphere, after it is saturated with water, is a phenomenon, without which it woulc^ never rain ; nor could there be any springs, rivers, land plants or animals on the globe. This precipitation of water is effected by a change of temperature ; which change is the result of the revolution of the earth on its axis, and of solar heat. Day and night, spring, summer, autumn and winter, with their ever- varying temperature, varying winds and clouds, and constantly changing humidity, are all results of fixed laws, which invite the research of every reasoning mind.

Solar Heat. — According to Professor. Forbes, the rays of heat coming from the sun and passing through the atmosphere in the shortest line, at the latitude of Paris, lose twenty-five per cent, of their calorific power by the time they reach the earth. Rays that strike the atmosphere at an angle of only twenty-five degrees, part with half their intensity or hoat by the time they touch the ground. The molecules of air absorb and radiate heat into space the same as other ponderable bodies. Hence, no matter how clear the atmosphere, neither the rising nor the setting sun imparts so much light or heat to those parts of the earth so affected as they receive when the sun is at the meridian.

The effect of solar rays on the earth is still farther diminished morning and evening by the fact that fewer fall on any given area, because they impinge upon the surface obliquely. One can look at the setting sun with impunity, not because it emits less heat or light at that time, but because the rays are mostly absorbed and radiated in passing through many miles of atmosphere, before they reach the eye of the observer.

The facility with which solar heat penetrates and warms the soil to the depth of six, twelve, eighteen and twenty-four inches, and the radiation of heat from the earth, the leaves of plants, and all other substances, deserve particular notice. A distinction must be made between the radiation of heat from the surface of anybody, and the transmission of it through any substance, as iron, wood, water, mould or soil. All these hold different relations to this pecu- liar element. It is not intended to take more than a popular view of this subject. At the time of seeding in spring, a single day is sufficient to warm to the depth of four inches a mellow soil, recently ploughed. Two days of sun will warm the ground six inches ; and six days twelve inches. The fall of warm rain on a well-drained, mellow soil, greatly hastens the heat- ing of the earth. On the contrary, the fall of cold rain, or much cold water in the ground, greatly retards the rise of temperature in tilled land. Heat and water should be studied together, if one would obtain a clear idea of their joint influence on vegetation. When water evaporates, it expands to sixteen hundred and ninety-six times its former volume, and renders latent, or insensible, a considerable amount of active heat. Hence, a wet piece of ground, from the surface of which a good deal of water evaporates, is always cooled by the constant loss of sensible heat, which rises in vapor, and departs far into the atmosphere.

The warmer the atmosphere the greater its capacity to hold water in the condition of a diffused, invisible vapor. The lower strata of air are heated much more by caloric radiated from the earth than by the absorption of

40 Doc. No. 20.

;

heat in its passage from the sun to the planet. Air thus heated becomes expanded or rarified, and specifically lighter than the colder air above it. This causes the air within and near the tropics to rise high above the sur- face of the earth, and flow over both north and south, toward either pole ; while colder and heavier air rushes in toward the equator to fill the empty space. These aerial currents are deflected in their courses by the diurnal revolution of the earth, and by mountain ranges whose summits are often covered with eternal snow ; and they are still farther modified by the vary- ing temperature of the ocean, and its peculiar streams.

Heat and water are the fruitful parents of winds and clouds. When aque- ous vapor is precipitated in rain or snow, heat that was latent becomes again sensible, and by increasing the capacity of the air to hold water in the form of v?rpor, prevents a disastrous deluge of this abundant element in nature. 1 The laws which restrain the precipitation of water from clouds are no less curious than those which cause it to rain at all. The atmosphere must ap- proach saturation before it can rain ; and it usually happens that the quanti- ties which will fall on a given area one hundred feet above the ground, and on the earth, are unequal. Large drops in falling through many feet of dry air become smaller by constant evaporation, and may be wholly dissi- pated before they reach the earth. On the other hand, quite small drops formed in cold regions high in the air constantly condense more vapor in falling through a saturated atmosphere, and will be many times larger when they reach the ground than at their starting point.

To illustrate the production of rain, let us suppose that a current of air at seventy degrees temperature, saturated with moisture, meets and mingles with another current, also saturated, but having a heat of fifty degrees. Now, if the atmosphere at the mean temperature of sixty degrees had a capacity to hold water as an invisible vapor, equal to the mean of seventy degrees and fifty degrees, it is obvious that no precipitation would take place. But such is not the fact. The quantity of water held in air, heated from sixty to seventy degrees, cannot be contained in that heated from fifty to sixty degrees. In other words, whatever cools air, saturated with moisture, causes a cloud, dew, mist or rain.

Early and late frosts are produced by the radiation of heat during clear nights, from the foliage of plants and other terrestrial bodies. If the tem- perature of the air is not very low at sundown, and it is humid, vegetation will so soon reach the dew-point that the latent heat evolved by the for- mation of much dew will prevent a frost. If the atmosphere is dry, clear and still, the dew-point is lower, and all the circumstances are favorable to freeze the little vapor condensed on such substances as radiate heat with the greatest facility. Anything which checks the radiation of heat, like a oloud, smoke, screon, or wind which agitates the atmosphere, serves to prevent frost.

Every farmer should have a thermometer and rain-guage, and know the degroe of heat most favorable to all his Crops. The due temperature and moisture of the soil arc as much elements of production and profit as good manure and skillful tillage.

The writer lias etadieu the growth of corn in different months, noting the changes from four o'clock A. M. to M.J from noon to eight P. I\I.; and from eight Pi M. to Four A. M. When the temperature is favorable, corn grows 09 much pet1 hour in fhc oigkt as in the daytime.

No agriculturist Ls bo far advanced in the science of climatology as to

Doc. No. 20. 41

make all that can be made of the water, solar light and heat, which nature so bountifully supplies. There is no State in the Union where the mean temperature of summer is too low to ripen maize, or corn, as is the case in England, Scotland and Ireland. The cutting down of too much timber in some parts of the country has operated to change, in some degree, the cli- mate, and render large districts more subject to alternate droughts and rainy seasons. In summer, when frequent and moderate rains are greatly needed, the air is too dry to yield much more than respectable dews, for many weeks in succession. \

)i To learn the well-authenticated results of clearing forests, in drying up natural springs, and changing climates, regularity of rains, &c, the reader is referred to the writings of Humboldt, Kaemtz-, Forbes, Boussingault, and other meteorologists. Humboldt remarks, " In felling trees which cover the crowns and slopes of mountains, men in all climates seem to be bringing on future generations two calamities at once — a want of fuel and a scarcity of water."*

The waste of valuable timber in the United States, to say nothing of fire- wood, will hardly begin to be appreciated until our population reaches fifty millions. Then the folly and short-sightedness of this age will meet with a degree of censure and reproach not pleasant to contemplate.

Different plants require unlike degrees of heat and light to bring them to maturity. The potato will produce an edible tuber at a mean temperature so low that neither its own seeds nor those of any cereal can be -formed. Boussingault found them cultivated in South America, at an elevation having a mean heat as low as forty-nine degrees, requiring eleven months in which to grow, or three hundred and thirty -five days between the planting and dig- ging. In many parts of this country, persons begin to dig potatoes in seventy days from the planting ; and potatoes planted the first of May will be ripe by the first of August. In some of the Southern States they grow best in the winter season. "Winter barley and rye will mature their seeds at a lower temperature than wheat. Humboldt found at Jakoustk, in high-central Asia, where the earth was constantly frozen at the depth of three feet below the surface, both rye and wheat yielding a return sometimes of fifteen to one of seed. At that place, the mercury is frozen two months in the year, the cold being over seventy-two degrees below freezing. Short as the sum- mers are, they have a mean temperature of sixty -four degrees.

On the northern slope of Monte Rosa, in Switzerland, barley ceases to grow at an elevation of four thousand two hundred and sixty feet above the sea; on the southern side, it continues to be cultivated at the height of about six thousand five hundred and sixty feet. Boussingault says that the difference is ascribed to local causes.

In studying the mean temperature and annual fall of rain, including snow and dew, in the United States, and the distribution of both heat and water through the year, one can hardly escape the conviction that no other equal area on the globe has equal agricultural capabilities. Yfithout including Delaware, there are within a fraction of six hundred million acres in the Southern States. On two-thirds of this vast surface, wheat is harvested early enough in May and June to permit a crop of corn to mature before autumn frosts. By drawing a line from the Atlantic due west to the Rio Grande, so as to have three hundred million acres south of it, on every arable acre two crops

* Humboldt, vol. v. p. 173.

42

Doc. No. 20.

of this most valuable of breadstuff's can be harvested in a year. Allowing one- third of this area for forests, the beds of rivers, and irreclaimable surface, and there is left two hundred million acres for cultivation. On the supposi- tion that the south had a population adequate to demand such crops, one hun- dred million acres might be drilled with seed wheat in November, after corn harvest, putting half the needful fertilizers in with the seed, and sowing the balance broadcast in February or March, after the English and Belgian practice. With skillful culture and feeding, an average return of twenty bushels might reasonably be expected, producing an aggregate crop of two thousand millions of bushels. This crop would be harvested between the 10th of May and 15th of June, after which a crop of corn may be grown. With a dense population, as in Belgium, France, and many parts of China, there can never be a real lack of fertilizers ; so that sixty bushels of corn can be produced on every acre of arable surface in our thirty States. By this estimate, it is seen that the same land which had produced two thousand mil- lion bushels of wheat might, so far as the climate is concerned, easily yield six thousand million bushels of corn, in season to seed with wheat again in autumn. Of the other one hundred million acres of arable soil, one-half may be planted in cotton and enriched no more than to give an average of a bale of four hundred pounds to the acre. This will secure an annual crop twenty times larger than is now grown in the United States, and fifteen times larger than the consumption of the whole human family. There will still remain fifty million acres adapted to the culture of sugar-cane, rice, tobacco, and othernmportant staples.

The United States possess a territory embracing over two thousand millions of acres, more than a moiety of which is arable land, and a climate whose mean temperature, and fall of rain greatly favor the production of human food and clothing.

As we are now engaged in laying the foundation of an empire such as the world has never seen, nor scarcely conceived possible, every advantage of soil, climate, natural products, and such valuable trees for timber, fruit and fuel, as may be profitably cultivated, should command universal care and attention.

The following meteorological tables and statistics are compiled from the accounts received at fchis office, and contain valuable information as to the temperature, fall of rain, &c, in various parts of the United States.

Mean annual depth of Rain for four yearn.

(From records of the Smithsoniaa Institution.)

Fort Constitution, N. IT. Water-town Arsenal, Mass. Fort Hamilton, N. Y. Hancock Uarraoks, N. Y. Watervlcit Arsenal, N. Y. Wost Point, N. Y. Allttghany Argenal, Pcnna. DearbdrB Arsenal, Mich. Port Brady,

" Howard, "

11 Winnebago, "

" Snellmg, Iowa.

" Crawford. Wis.

Inches. 28.85 39.69 45.71 36.92 34.22 45.7© 28.14 31. 3d 31.99 §8.83 31.88 30.32 29.54

Doc. No. 20.

43

Fort Leavenworth, Mo. St. Louis Arsenal, Mo. Fort Smith, Ark.

" Gibson, "

* Towson, " . New Orleans Barracks, La Fort Wood, La. . Key West, Florida, Charleston, S. G. Fort Monroe, Va.

" McHenry, Md. Washington City, D. C. Baltimore (8 years), Boston (22 years), Hanover, N. H. State of New York, State of Ohio,

Inches.

32.68 24.12

35.64 30.64 46.73 51.85 47.90 31.39 33.89 52.53 40.80 34.62 39.90 39.23 38.00 36.00 36.00

Harvard Observatory, Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 18^7*, 1850. Dear Sir — Yours of the 15th instant I received yesterday. In answer to your inquiries, I enclose the mean temperature of the external air at this place, for each month from 1842 to 1849 inclusive.

	1842	1S43	1844	1845	1816	1847	1S48	1840
	Fahr.
January,	27°.l	29°.6	15°.3	27°.2	27°.4	26°.4	29°.l	24°.6
February,	31.6,	16.5	24.6	27.6	21.3	25.9	24.7	185
March,	37.4	25.7	33.8	36.2	38.2	30.8	32.2	35.8
April,	44.4	43.5	48.4	46.3	49.5	42.0	45.5	45.3
May,	51.7	54.5	57.3	56.6	55.8	53.3	57.8	52.6
June,	62.6	64.2	65.1	68.1	65.0	64.7	64.8	67.7
July,	72.7	69.2	68.2	72.1	71.6	73.0	70.2	71.G
August,	07.5	' 69.9	67.7	71.3	70.2	68.1	69.5	70.9
September,	58.2	60.6	64.0	60.2	67.7	60.9	58.6	60.0
October,	48.1	47.3	45.5	51.8	51.2	47.7	49.8	49.2
November,	34.8	34.3	34.3	44.3	43.2	44.1-	36.2	45.0
December,	23.8	26.9	26.6	25.6	27.4	34.8	35.2	28.9

Respectfully and sincerely yours,

WM. CRANCH BOND.

Daniel Lee, M. D.,

Patent Office, Washing-ton.

Yale College Library, New Haven, Conn., Jan. 24:th, 1850. Sir — Your letter of the 15th inst. with inquiries respecting the mem T temperature of New Haven, was duly received, but as a reply to the second. I query could not be given without some reduction of the original calculations^ {which were made for the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, at jj New Haven), I have been obliged on account of pressing engagements to "; delay a few days. f

The mean temperature of the year at this place is 49° Fahr. very nearly. '*; Taking four years at random, I find the mean temperature for the six months j from April to Sept., each inclusive, to be, *

at sunrise, 55°. 74 Fahr. ; land 2 P.M., 71°.44; 10 P. M., 60G.91. — - „ ,

44

Doc. No. 20.

A larger range of years would probably make a little change in tke figures ; but these results are perhaps exact enough for your purpose.

Respectfully your obedient servant,

EDWAED C. HERRICK. Dr. D. Lee,

Agricultural Ilooms, Washington.

i

Collegiate Institute, Rochester, N. Y., Jan. 19th% 1850. The annual mean temperature of the year 1849 at Rochester is 46°.48 Fahr.

The mean for the six months from April to Sept. inclusive, is 60°. 14. The total fall of rain and melted snow for the year, as above, 32 f8^ inches. For the six months, as above, 18/^ inches — distributed as follows : April 1.44 ; May 3.81; June 4.33; July 0.94; August 3.62; September 3.91.

Total number of fair day3 during the year, one hundred and sixty-two.

Number of cloudy days during the year . . . 203

" " fair days during the six months as above . 110 J

" " cloudy " " " " . T2J

Highest range of the mercury, 95° . . . July 10th.

Lowest " " " 9° below zero, . Jan. 12th.

Respectfully yours,

L. WETHERELL.

Abstract of a Meteorological Journal for 1849. At Penn Yan, Yates Co., N. Y. North Lat. 42°42'. Lon. west from Washington, 0°51'. By H.

P. Sartwell, M. D.

Warmest day in the year Coldest " " First autumnal frost First fall of snow

July 12th, 90* Feb. 15th, 15° Oct. 2d. Nov. 22d.

	oj S2	E p g	E 3 s s i-t	6 s OB	•a	-a	bo (3 • •~ • 00 ~T3	4	General character
		■	3 5 o 2	a £ ed	■ V O		•si E	of tke iaombk.
								Inchos.
January,	22°.12	52°	- 4°	56°	25th	10th	W. S & NE	.57	Pleasant for winter.
February,	21.14	50	-13	63	28th	15th	w. sw & s	.54	Windy, unpleasant.
March,	33.64	62	6	56	21st	4 th	N.S.W	.85	Cloudy, disagreeable.
April,	40.90	70	17	53	7th	16th	w&s	.48	Dry and raw.
May,	52.22	HO	27	59	22d	2d	s&w	3.12	Wet, unpleasant.
Jane,	04.63	88	40	48	21st	Oth	s.sw&w	2.20	Ploaaant.
July,	06.77	90	39	r-l	12 th	2d	s&w	1.60	Hot and dry.
August,	07.22	86	00	30	5th	1st	s.sw&w	1.69	Hat and dry.
September,	58.60	82	39	43	14th	9th	w&sw	1.37	Warm an A pleasant.
Octobor,	46.60	07	21	40	10th	3Ut	w. sw & s	0.29	Wet and chilly.
November,	44.66	00	26	40	full	29th	s. sw St w	2.88	Raw, ditagreeabfo
December,	27.20	42	_ 'j	41	20th	2.0tU	W.NW&N	1.38	Cloudy, unpleasant.

» >

Total fall of rain 22.07 inches Annual mean temperature 46°.4o\

Doc. No. 20.

45

Meteorological Observations made at the JSfew York Hospital for the year 1849. By John Darcey.

	>»								a	<a	XI c
1849	a a	D fit o fa .		<	>> 3			bo s <	* o ■11	.3 o o O	03 >	O o
Barometer.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.
Maximum	29.65	30.57	39.40	30.27	30.44	30.28	30.22	30.15 ,30.36	30.25	30.24	30.44
Minimum	29.51	29.65	29.43	29.16	29.53	29.69	29.72	29.73 29.57 29.30	29.53	29.00
Mean	30.28	30.04	29.97	29.S4	29.97	29.98	30.04	29.99	30.00 29.88	29.93	29.97
Thermometer.			~
Monthly mean	28°	27°	40°	45°	55°	70°	70°	72°	64°	53°	49°	33°
Highest	52	47	68	66	7S	91	94	82	79	67	67	50
Lowest	4	7	27	26	40	55	55	60	51	39	32	9
Range	48	40	41	40	38	36	39	28	28	28	34	41
Warmest day	26	24	31	4	4	22	13	7	17	17	4	1 j Total.
Coldest day	11	19	4	15	6	12	31	1	9	31	2	26
Fair days	10	6	9	11	6	13	11	9	15	5	7	7 109
Cloudy days	3	6	2	3	7	4	8	9	7	8	0	Sj 72
Rain fell	8	1	10	6	16	8	8	11	7	14	9	7 102
Inches of rain and melted sbow	.56	1.99	5.55	1.00	3.77	.79	3.08	5.58	.73	6.55	2.02	4.39 i 36.01
									i

Meteorological Observations at Newark, N. </., 1849. By W. A. WItiiehead.

	THERMOXETER.	WEATHER.
	Highest	Lowest	Monthly-	Fair	Rainy		Rain and	Prevailing
	daily	daily-	mean.	days.	days.	Snow.	melted	winds.
	mean .	mean .					snow.
January	47°.50	6°.00	2 6°. 3 3	18	6	2	.64	N.W.
February	37.12	11.88	24.S2	15	5	9	2.69	S.W.andN.W.
March	59.25	28.00	40.17	16	12	3	4.85	X.W. and N.
April	57.00	30.50	47.20	19	5	—	.91	N.W. and W.
May June	70.13 83.12	39.G2 50.75	55.52 70.15	15 21	11 6	—	4,23	N.E. and S.E. E. and W.
— —	1.09
July	89.00	63.13	73.84	21	6	—	2.36	N.E. and S.E.
August	76.00	67.12	72.12	21	11	—	8.0S	E. and S.E.
September	75.50	57.90	64.38	23	7	—	1.60	N.W., N., N.E.
October	60.38	41.50	53.12	14	10	—	6.93	N.W. and N.E.
November	61.62	33.50	49.65	16	8	—	2,18	N.W. and S.W.
December	44.38	12.50	33.25	18	8	8	4.47	N.W. and W.
Results.
1849	63°.42	36°.7l	50°.S9	214	95	22	40.05
1848	64.37	36.71	51.24	233	91	23	36.90
1847	65.30	36.62	50.66	219	91	31	54,83
* 1846	65.43	36.30	51.66	209	98	23	51.57
1845	64.28	37.65	51.37	238	S8	24	36.47

The observations upon which the yearly results in the above table are based, extending over five consecutive years, afford reliable data for some general deductions respecting the climate at this place.

The highest stage of the mercury in the course of five years was 99f><\ The lowest was 2|-° — making the range 102J°.

46

Doc. No. 20.

Abstract of Meteorological Register, kept for the Delaware County (Pa.)

Institute of Science.

North Latitude 39° 55' 18". Longitude 1° 86' 10" east from Washing- n ton. Altitude above tide water 175 feet.

Months.

December, 184S January, 1849 February March. April May June Jury August September October Kerember Result

THERMOMETER.

60°. 50 52.66 46 66 72

83.50 98 95

24°

1.50 -1.50 16 24 41 45 52 53 43 33 29

S

42°.9S

28.63

27.03

41.56

49.48

57.22

71.71

72.85

71.95

62.29

53.11

49.72

52.37

BAROMETER.

30.58 30.76 30.60 30,45 30.32 30.48 30.35 30.30 30.20 30.43 30.30 30.31

29.68 29.67 29.66 29.52 29.27 29.56 29.70 29.75 29.78 29.66 29.42 29.52

30.03 30.12 30.11 30.03 29.99 30.01 30.27 30.09 30.02 30.10 30.00 29.99 30.06

19

is

1(3 17 19 17 12 16 14

io

19 15

102

12 13 12 14 11 14 18 15 17 20 12 15 173

12 7

114

RAIN" GUASB.

12

Inches.

5.08

.81

2.65

4.54

1.47

4.48

2.8«

2.31

6.02

.48

8.65

2.50

41.85

Annual Report of Temperature and Rain at Springdale, near Louisville, Ky.

Mean temperature Rak» .

Fahr.

53°

Inches.

2.46

B

38° 4.75

43° 10.90

33° 5.53

33° 3.06

4.08

53° i 63°

I

2.23' 4.29

72° 4.65

4.07

71°

2.78

m

65° 1.01

53°.8

49.81

Highest range of thermometer, June 27, 90°.

Lowest range of thermometer, February 19, 7° below zero.

Meteorological Table of Monthly Means, kept at Nighiingal	e Rail, on
	Fedee River, S. O. By James Kelly.
	THERMOMETER.	WEATHER.	DIRECTION OF WIKB. NO. OF BATS.
\ , JBontbu. •	€> ■ rs 41°	•^1	GO	■ G '3	jj o	5 a] > o	• 3	Y	Y.	w Y	w	W	Of)		*
Jtfnnarj!	44°	45°	3	2	—	—	9	h	3 1	1	4	2	3
February	454	4'.»i	46	o	5	s	13	B	—	4 2	—	1	—	3
March	571	62	61	5	3	e	15	o	2	2 7	4	6	2	6
April	07		69	2	2	.)	21	2	2	7 J 5	1	—	5	5
May	71	79	74 i	7	6	9	id	—	—	1 11	1	o	3	11
.liit).'	771	S3	78	fi	1	n	2 1	—	—	—	s	—	()	4	«
Juty	77	79 H2	7S B0	L9 11			18	1		3 3	2 1	1 3	4 4	10 2	J
Aagvtt	1	1	3
BeptemlMi	77$	77	75	10	1	—		4		V	7	1		1

Doc. No. 20

47

Abstract of Meteorological Observations, for 1849, at Columbia, S. C, Lati- tude 34°. By A. 'Fitch,

	THERMOMETER.				WEATHER.			<o
	MEAN TEMPERATCSE.	>»	^					a O	m
							to
•				^a	T3					t-.	c
:	M •	!_J	jj	m			>,			.ti	s
,' Months.	*	*H	f=5	a>		u	2	a	>.	~	>
	<	(Li	P-,	o		a		«	C3	s	t*
	t^	Oi	Oi		O	psi	o	tf	w	&	P-.
	Fahr.									Inches.
January-	37°.08	51°	42°. 16	15°	12°	17	10	4	0	1.	Fair
February	35.21	42.13	42.08	5	19	IS	7	1	2	1.12	«
March	50.09	65.04	55.	21	4	20	6	5	0	3.87	u
April	52.04	72.10	59.21	25	16	23	1	4	2	1.50	u
May	66.27	78.28	71.16	9	12	20	2	9	0	7.62	(i
June	75.17	80.23	78.05	24	12	17	7	6	0	3.12	«
July	78.09	80.13	76.17	1	5	11	7	13	0	7.50	Rain
August	74.04	84.30	78.25	18	11	24	1	6	0	4.37	Fair
September	G7.22	80.18	73.04	30	25	22	4	4	0	2.37	it
October	53.20	69.16	59.20	1	31	18	3	9	1	5.75	u
November	44.29	69.17	49.23	7	21	22	7	1	0	0.62	"
December	42.01	53.15	45.16	10	12	14	10	6	1	5.50	■
Total	226	65	68	6	44.34

Extract from the Meteorological Journal, kept by the Young Ladies of the Oakland Institute, at Jackson, Miss. For the year ending November 30, 1849. *

x	THERMOMETER.	RAIS.	V. BATHER.
	Least	Greatest	Mean for		Depth in	Clear and	Damp and
	height.	height.	the month.	No. days.	inches.	pleasant days.	unpleasant days.
December, 1848	27°	79°	55°.02	11	8.11	14	17
January, 1849	26	78	51.09	6	2.74	13	18
February	14	78	46.50	4	.69	22	6
March	33	84	65.53	4	3.55	23	8
AprH	30	86	64.40	6	2.69	22	- 8
May	56	87	72.80	13	[ 6.89	21	10
June	66	90	77.29	14	4,57	17	in
July	68	90	77.88	21	12.23	5	26
August	71	91	80.58	12	3.38	13	18
September	52	91	74.82	2	.32	27	3
October	34	86	63.64	4	6.25	24	7
November	33	79	58.17	6	9.54	23	7
Total	103	60.83	241	141

Mean height of thermometer, for the year, 6 5°. 64.

Note, — The mean height of the thermometer is the mean of four observations daily. The " No. days' rain" includes every day on which rain fell, without regard to quantity. The " damp and unpleasant days" include many days that were only partially so.

48

Doc. No. 20.

Abstract of Meteorological Observations, near Washington, Arkansas. B§

N. D. Smith.

	THEtlSlftMBTER.	RA12T.
Months.	"to H	o * o	1849	IS 18	1817	1846	1845	1844	1643	1842	1841
			In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.	In.
January	72°	18°	8.62	3.	2.62	2.5	7.25	2.5	2.75	3.25	5.
February	78	6	5.62	2.5	6.75	4.	3.	2.87	1.5	3.62	.12
March	80	34	5.25	4.25	9.5	3.5	7.37	6.87	5.62	4.37	8.25
April	86	32	2.37	5.5	5.87	6.62	5.37	7.5	9.12	4.	5.
May	85	54	3.5	5.25	3.75	2.37	4.87	3.S7	5.37	1.87	7.
June	90	CO	2.62	8.62	3.87	4.12	6.75	4.75	3.62	5.5 '	4,75
July	91	70	18.5	6.5	5.29	3.25	2.5	1.12	2.62	1.62	1.25
August	94	G8	3.87	2.87	7.25	1.	.25	1.12	3.	4.	2.75
September	90	56	1.37	J.	1.5	1.75	2.	4.5	6.S7	1.5	4-5
October	84	38	3.	2.75	1.	2.75	6.92	4.12	6.75	2 62	8.5
Noveiuber	80	34	4.62	6.75	5.25	2.25	1.	2.5	10.	2.62	2.37
December				9.5	4.12	3.75	4.12	1.5	3.37	5.12	2.75
Total				58.5	56.75	37.87	50.75	43.25	60.62	40.12	52.25

Mcteorolog leal Obseriu

itiom

? at Fort Madison,

Iowa. By B

. McCreadi/.

1S49

S .3

2

<

S

si >-3

3

<

i & m

o O

1 > o Z.

1 o o

Yearly mean.

i - Mean temperature 1G.5G

2L31

0 40.36

49/79

59?37

74?26

73?5S

71?59

0 6G.94

52?2S

47?54

49!62

Total.

Fall of water

1.50

11.05

5.47

2.90

3.32

.70

10.91

7.S0 1 3.30

S.15

>5.20

Fall of snow

12.

2.50

\

6.

20.50

The coldest day during the year was the 18th of February; the lowest

range, of the thermometer on that day being 18° below zero — the dailj

moan G°.oo below zero. .

' The warmest day was the Oth of July — at 2 o'clock, 100° in the shade.

Doc. No. 20. 49

IV.

SECOND REPORT ON THE BREADSTUFFS OF THE UNITED 8 STATES, MADE TO THE COMMISSIONER OF PATENTS, BY LEWIS C. BECK, M.D.

Rutgers College, New Brunswick, N. J., January 1st, 1850. Sir :■ — I beg leave to lay before you the results of my researches in re- gard to the breadstuffs of the United States, since the date of my former report made to the Hon. Edmund Burke, on the loth of December, 1848. In that report I have given a full account of the objects of the investiga- tion, and the modes adopted in its prosecution. There is little difference of opinion concerning the importance of our breadstuffs ; but there is still, it seems, a want of general information as to the causes which have an in- fluence upon their value. Among these the most important undoubtedly is carelessness in the shipment from the interior to our commercial depots, .and from thence to foreign ports. It is to this point that my attention has been particularly directed, as one of great utility ; and the large number of samples of American wheat and wheat flour which have been received from England, have enabled me to arrive at some general conclusions upon the subject. The analyses of several samples, the growth of various foreign countries, have also afforded me an opportunity of comparing the American and foreign wheats and flours. With a few exceptions of peculiar varieties, it will be seen from the results that with ordinary care the wheat of this country will compare advantageously with that of any other. Indeed, on reviewing my analyses, I question whether there is any part of the world where this grain is generally of a finer quality than it is in the United ^States. But all the advantages which we possess in this respect will be of little avail so long as inferior and damaged breadstuffs are shipped from our ports.

i> In addition to the analyses which I have executed of the various samples of wheat and wheat flour according to the mode heretofore pursued, I have performed a series of experiments for the purpose of settling the important question in regard to the relative value of the fine flour of wheat, and the "whole meal." I have also consulted every work within my reach which could throw any light upon the different points that have presented them- selves during the progress of the investigation.

The large number of samples of wheat and wheat flour which have been i j>laced in my hands for examination, have left me no time for the analysis ' of our other breadstuffs. I trust you will excuse me for saying that I have at least not been wanting in industry. Notwithstanding the depressing influences which during the past season were so general, I have prosecuted my researches with little interruption. Whether these researches shall be continued, and whether they shall be continued under mj direction, are

50 Doc. No. 20.

questions, the decision of which must be left to jour appreciation of their importance and of the manner in which they have thus far been conducted.

I have the honor to be

Your obedient servant,

LEWIS C. BECK. Hon. Thomas Ewbank,

Commissioner of Patents, Washington City,

REPORT.

General Remarks upon the value of our JBreadstuffs.

The experience of the past year may perhaps have led many persons to suppose that the statements which I have heretofore made concerning the importance of our breadstuffs, in a commercial point of view, were too highly colored. It cannot be denied that the amount shipped to foreign ports during that period is considerably less than for the two preceding years. In the mean time, however, a new and important market has been opened in our own territories on the Pacific. It may also be safely affirmed that the causes for foreign demand, and which must hereafter operate, still remain. These are, the cheapness of land in this country, and the peculiar adaptation of our soil and climate to the growth of the two important cereals, wheat and maize.

Another fact, it seems to me, is of sufficient interest in connection with this subject, to be here noticed. The failure of the potato crop in various parts of the world for several years past has engaged the attention of scientific and practical men. Unfortunately, the nature of the blight which, has seized upon this tuber has eluded the most careful inquiries; but it has been shown by well-conducted analyses that potatoes at their late prices are the most expensive kind of farinaceous food. This will be evident from the following statement : —

"Potatoes contain from about seventy to seventy-nine per cent, of water, while the proportion in wheat flour is from twelve to fourteen per cent. And while the gluten and albumen in potatoes scarcely rise to one per cent., in wheat flour the range may be set down at from nine to thirteen per cent. Again, the non-nitrogenous principles are as about seventy-five per cent, in wheat flour against fifteen or sixteen in potatoes. In short, whilst potatoes supply only twenty per cent, of heat-formiDg and nutritious prin- ciples, taken together, wheat supplies more than seventy per cent, of the former, and more than,ton of the latter. The value of wheat to potatoes, therefore, is at least four to one : or, if wheat sells at fifteen shillings (ster- ling) per cv/t., potatoes to be equally cheap ought to sell at between three and (our shillings. '*

The preceding results, for which T am principally indebted to Pr. Dau- beny, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford^* show that unless a great change occurs in the culture of the }>< t; increased demand for

other kinds of farinaceous f.ool. And it IS worthy of notice that while this

bligni is one of* the causes which brinj i r shores the starving popula-

\ lecture on the outritive value of diflR rent articles of food, by 0. Danbeuy, M. D., "'Gardeners' Onronlole" (London), January 20th, L849, j>. 37.

Doc. No. 20. 51

tion of Europe, the raising of the cereals not only furnishes profitable employment to the emigrant, but enables him to make the best return to those who are still obliged to remain.

Adaptation of the Soil and Climate of the United States to the Culture

of the Cereals.

That the soil and climate of many portions of the United States are well adapted to the cultivation of the more important cereals, is fully shown by the results of all the researches which have thus far been prosecuted. I have indeed seen it asserted that the climate of England is the best for the cultivation of wheat, and preferable to any in our country ; its humidity being the peculiarity to which this superiority is ascribed.* But this is un- doubtedly the testimony of a too partial witness. A recent statement by an English author is the result of a more correct knowledge of the facts. He acknowledges that there is no ground for the expectation which has been entertained concerning the advantageous growth of maize in England. "Nor is ours," says he, "the most favorable country for wheat, but skill in husbandry has overcome great difficulties, "f The mistake on this subject may have originated from the occurrence of a larger and plumper grain in the more humid climate ; but analysis shows that the small grain raised in the hotter and drier air oftentimes greatly surpasses the former in its nutri- tive value.

Russia is said to be the great rival of this country in the growth of wheat, but I think it doubtful whether she possesses superior natural advantages ; and I am sure she will find it difficult to compete with the industry and skill which here characterize the operations of husbandry, and the manufacture and shipment of breadstuffs.

Export of Sophisticated and Damaged Flour.

It is a matter of deep regret that circumstances have occurred whioh must have a most injurious influence upon the trade in breadstuffs between this country and Great Britain. I refer to the mixtures of damaged, inferior and good kinds of flour, which it appears on authentic testimony have been largely exported during the past year. Whether this fraudulent operation, which is said to have been principally confined to New York, is the result of the change in the inspection laws, as some assert, I am unable to say. But it requires no great foresight to predict that, if continued, it will create a distrust of our breadstuffs m foreign ports which it will be very difficult to remove. It cannot but excite the indignation of the many honorable deal- ers, that the unworthy cupidity of a few individuals should lead to such disastrous consequences.

I have as yet been unable to obtain samples of these sophisticated flours, and the only information which I have in regard to them is the general fact above stated, and concerning the truth of which there can be little doubt. No means should be left untried to devise some mode by which these frauds can be easily and certainly detected.

* Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society, 1849, p. 646. The state- ment here referred to was made by Mr. Slocum.

f A lecture " On the Geographical Distribution of Corn Plants," by the Rey. E. Sid- ney— Proceedings of the Royal Institution (London), May 18th7 1849.

52 Doc. No. 20. V

Injury sustained by Breadstuff* during their Transport and Shipment

During the past year, I have had abundant means of determining the nature of the injuries which are often sustained by our breadstuffs in their transport from the particular districts in which they are grown and manu- factured to our commercial depots, and in their shipment to foreign ports. As this is one of the most important points connected with these researches, I have devoted much time to its investigation. From the results of nume- rous analyses, I think it may be safely asserted, that of the wheat flour which arrives in England from various ports of the United States, a large proportion is more or less injured during the voyage. The same remark may be made in regard to many of the samples sent from the Western States to the city of New York. Their nutritive value is considerably impaired, and without more care than is usually exercised, they are entirely unfit for export.

In my former report, I adverted to one of the great causes of the dete- rioration which our breadstuffs often suffer during their transport and ship- ment. This was the undue proportion of the great disorganizing substance, water, under the influence of what usually occurs, viz., an elevation of tem- perature above the ordinary standard. My recent investigations have served only to strengthen these views. There is no doubt that these are the conditions which cause the change of the non-nitrogenous principles into acids (the lactic or acetic), while a portion of the gluten is thus also consumed.

I have trie^ a series of experiments in reference to the action of moist- ure upon various samples of wheat and wheat flour. The samples were placed for twelve hours in the oven of a bath with a double casing, con- taining a boiling saturated solution of common salt, the temperature of which was about 220° Fahr. Subjected to this test,

100 grains of Milwaukie wheat lost 12.10 grains.

" " Guilderland (Holland) wheat lost 9.35 "

" " Polish Odessa red wheat " 10.55 "

" " Soft Russian wheat " 8.55 "

" " Kubanka wheat " 8.15 a

After an exposure of the dried samples to the air for two or three days, they increased in weight from one to three grains in the hundred originally employed.

Nineteen different samples of wheat flour, which lost by exposure to the above heat from ten to fourteen grains in the one hundred, when similarly exposed to the air for eighteen hours, again increased in weight from 8.40 to 11.50 in the hundred grains originally employed.

These experiments show, what might indeed have been predicted as to the general result, that wheat in grain, if not less liable to injury than flour, yet if once properly dried, suffers much less from a subsequent exposure to air and moisture.

It is now ascertained that in presence of a considerable proportion of water, wheat Hour under the influence of heat undergoes a low degre leaM of lactic fermentation ; which will account for the souring of the ordi- nary samples when exposed to warm or humid climates. Th result will inevitably follow from their careless exposure in the holds of ves- sels. That this is particularly (' svitu many i>f the cargoes of wheat flour shipped t<> Great Britain, there i> little reason to doubt. This may Ik* partly owing t<» th of the English climate, as the defc rioration is observed as well in the Hour which i.s the pr^duoe of that Country as in thai which is I from ab:

Doc. No. 20. 53

It is stated by Mr. Edlin, quoted in an article on Baking, in the Ency- clopedia Britannica, that, "as a general rule, the London flour is de- cidedly bad. The gluten generally wants the adhesiveness which charac- terizes the gluten of good wheat."

I have observed that, in the analyses of some of the samples of damaged flour, the proportions of what is set down under the heads of glucose and dextrine are unusually large. This is perhaps due to the change produced in the starch by the action of diastase, and which may under certain cir- cumstances be formed in wheat flour. It would seem, according to M. Guerin, that starch may thus be acted on even at slightly elevated tempera- tures. In one of his experiments, at a temperature no higher than 68° Fahr., a quantity of starch, at the end of twenty-four hours, was converted into syrup, which yielded seventy-seven per cent, of saccharine matter.*

It may be thought that I have overrated the importance of this subject, but it is believed that a careful examination of the facts will relieve me from this charge. I am now satisfied that, if the proportion of water in our exported breadstuffs could be reduced to about five or six per cent., one of the great causes of complaint in regard to them would be completely removed.

Kiln-drying of Breadstuffs, and exclusion of air.

The injury which our breadstuffs sustain by the large proportion of water can of course be prevented only by careful drying before shipment, and by the employment of barrels rendered as impervious as possible to the influence of atmospheric moisture.

In my first report, I have spoken favorably of the process of drying by steam, according to the plan patented by Mr. J. E. Stafford. I still think this mode possesses great advantages #ver those previously followed, and which almost always injured the quality of the grain or flour : but from some trials which I have made during the past year, it is inferred that the exposure to the heat is perhaps usually not sufficiently prolonged to answer the purpose intended by the operation. I have often observed that samples of wheat flour, after being exposed to the heat of the salt water- bath oven (220° Fahr.) for two or three hours, lost weight by a further continuance of the heat. An apparatus has been patented by Mr. J. H. Tower, of Clinton, N. Y., consisting of a cylinder of square apartments or tubes, into which the grain or flour H introduced, and subjected to heat while in rapid revolution. I examined samples which had been subjected to this operation, and ascertained that wheat flour, originally containing 14.80 per cent, of water, had the proportion reduced to 10.25 per cent., while in wheat the proportion of water wa3 reduced from 14.75 to 8.55 per cent.

Now it is probable that by either of the above modes, and perhaps by many others, the various kinds of breadstuffs may be brought to that degree of dryness which, with ordinary care, shall protect them from subsequent injury ; but in order to secure this advantage, the operation must be carefully performed, and experiments must be made to ascertain how long an exposure to heat is necessary to bring the sample to the proper degree of dryness, and to determine whether in any respect its quality is impaired. It has already been stated that absolute desiccation is not necessary, even were it attainable ; but any process in order to be effective should reduce the pro- portion of water to about six, or at most, seven per cent.

* Boussingault's Rural Economy, American edition, pp. 85 and 86.

54 Doc. No. 20.

I have heretofore adverted to the great care employed In the drying of , grain in various foreign countries, and to which the preservation of it for a great number of years is to be ascribed.

The operation is not conducted in the hurried manner which is here thought to be so essential, but is continued long enough to effect the intended object. Thorough ventilation, as well as the proper degree of drying, and which is equally important, is thus secured.

It is said that in Russia the sheaves of wheat, carried into- the huts, arc suspended upon poles and dried by the heat of the overi. The grain shrinks very much during this process, but it is supposed to be less liable to the at- tacks of insects, and preserves its nutritive qualities for many years. During the winter, it is sent to market.*

With all the necessary attention which may be paid to the proper drying of our breadstuffs intended for export, another point is of equal import- ance, viz., the shipment in vessels rendered as impervious as possible to the influence of atmospheric moisture. For however carefully and thoroughly the drying, especially of wheat flour or maize meal, may have been performed, it will be nearly useless if the shipment is afterwards made in the barrels commonly employed, f And it is very certain that the transport and ship- ment of grain in bulk, as usually conducted, are attended with great loss. This difficulty might be removed at a trifling expense by adopting the plan suggested in the preceding report, and to which I would again respectfully call the attention of those who are engaged in this branch of trade.

I might here adduce a mass o£ testimony showing the importance of the matters just referred to, but will only advert to the following statements, which, although made in allusion principally to maize, arc equally appli- cable to our other breadstuffs. Maize meal, if kept too long, " is liable to become rancid, and it is then more or less, unfit for use. In the shipments made to the West Indies, the meal is commonly kiln-dried, to obviate as much as possible this tendency to rancidity." " When ground very fine, maize meal suffers a change by exposure to the air. It is oxygenated. It is upon the same principle that the juice of an apple, after a little ex- posure to the air, is oxygenated, and changes its character and taste. If the flour could be bolted in vacuo, it would not be changed." "Intel- ligent writers speak of the necessityjof preparing corn for exportation by kiln-drying as indispensable. Without that process, corn is very liable to become heated and musty, so as to be unfit for food for either man or beast. The kiln-dried maize meal from the Brandywine Mills, &c, made from the yellow corn, has almost monopolized the West India trade. This process is indispensable, if we export maize to Europe. James Candy says tli;it from fifty years experience he has learned the necessity of this process with eorn intended for exportation." " I have often found the corn from our country when it readied its destination, ruined by heating on the voyage. It had become musty and of little or no value. Kiln-drying is absolutely necessary to preserve it for exportation. We must learn and practice the best mode of kiln-drying itij

* The (/'/;u\ his Court :. n<l People. I>v John S. Maxwell, p. 272.

f Zeuas Collin, one of the oldest whnlenirn in Nantucket, statos that corn meal »u tight nun ponoheoni when scut to the West Indies, will keep sweet, while in common flour barrela it will .spoil. Report of the Commissioner of Patents for IS 17. p. 133.

t Prom remarks of Col. Skinner, and others, at a meeting oftho American Institute, held in April 1846. Transaction! of American Institute. 1846, p. 509 ttscq.

Doc. No. 20.

55

The Nutritious Value of the "whole meal" of Wheat, as compared with that of the Fine Flour.

The question, whether what is called the whole meal of wheat, or that which is obtained by the mixture of the bran, contains more nutritious matter than the fine flour, is one of great importance. In my former report, I ad- yerted to the statement made in regard to it by Professor J. F. "W. Johnston, and which seemed to be almost conclusive in favor of the superior value of the whole meal. During the past year, however (1849), M. Eng. Peligot, an eminent French chemist, in an elaborate article " On the Composition of Wheat," to which more particular reference will be made hereafter, combats the opinion that the bran is an alimentary substance. He observes that " the difficulty of keeping the bran in flour intended for the manufacture of bread of good quality, appears to result much less from the presence of the proportion of cellulose (one of the constituents of woody matter) con- tained in wheat than that of the fatty matter. This is found m the bran in a quantity at least triple of that which remains in the flour, and the "bolting separates it from the ground wheat not less usefully than the cellulose itself."*

M. Millon objects entirely to the views of M. Peligot on this point, and states some facts which are especially worthy of consideration. He asserts that, according to the views of the last-named chemist, the separation at most of one part of fatty matter sacrifices fifteen, twenty, and even twenty- five per cent, of substances which are of the highest nutritive value. This abstracts from wheat, for the whole amount raised in France, the enormous sum of about two hundred millions of pounds annually.

It seems that in France the question whether the bolting of flour is advan- tageous has always been decided in the most arbitrary manner. An ordi- nance of Louis XIV., issued in 1658, prohibited, under a very heavy penalty, the regrinding of the bran and its mixture with the flour; this, with the mode of grinding then in use, caused a loss of more than forty per cent.f

In large cities and elsewhere, there seems for some time to have been a growing prejudice against the use of brown bread ; and it is said that now nearly all the peasantry of France bolt their flour. The increase of this practice, according to M. Millon, threatens the nation with an annual loss of from two to three hundred millions of francs. If the bran was entirely valueless, there would be a loss of more than one million a-day.{

It is quite difficult to determine the precise amount of bran which may liave been removed from wheat, for various samples contain such a differ- ent proportion of bran that in the one case a removal of ten per cent, leaves more bran in the flour than a bolting of five per cent, in another.

The following are the results of an analysis of bran by M. Millon ; the sample being from a soft French wheat grown in 1848 : —

Starch, dextrine and sugar, ...... 53.00

Sugar of liquorice,

Gluten,

Fatty matter,

Woody matter,

Salts,

Water, .

Incrusting matter and aromatic principles (by difference),

1.00 14.90

3.60

9.70

.50

13.90

3.40

100.00

* Comptes Rendus des Seances de L'Academie des Sciences, February 5th, 1849. f Comptes Rendus, February 19th, 1849. $ Ibid.

M

Doc. No. 20.

The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is, that bran is an ali- mentary substance. If it contains six per cent, more of "woody matter than the rough flour, it has also more gluten, double that of fatty matter, besides, two aromatic principles which have the perfume of honey, and both of which are wanting in the fine flour. Thus by bolting, wheat is impoverished in its most valuable principles, merely to remove a few hundredths of woody matter.

The economical suggestion which springs from these views is, that the bran and coarse flour should be reground and then mixed with the fine flour. Milkm states that he has ascertained, by repeated experiments, that bread thus made is of superior quality, easily worked, and not subject to the in- convenience of bread manufactured from the rough flour, such as is made in some places, and especially in Belgium.

Opinions similar to those above noticed are entertained by Professor Daubeny. " The great importance attached to having bread perfectly white is a prejudice," says he, "which leads to the rejection of a very wholesome part of the food, and one which, although not digestible alone, is sufficiently so in that state of admixture with the flour in which nature has prepared it for our use." After quoting the remarks of Professor Johnston on the same side of the question, he adds, "that according to the experiments of Magen- die, animals fed upon fine flour died in a few weeks, whilst they thrived upon the whole meal bread." Brown bread, therefore, should be adopted, not merely on a principle of economy, but also as providing more of those ingredients which are perhaps deficient in the finer parts of the flour.*

The remarks of Dr. Robertson may also be here introduced. "The ad- vantage," says he, "of using more or less of the coverings of the grain in the preparation of bread has often been urged on economical principles. There can be no doubt that a very large proportion of nutritive matter is contained in the bran and tke pollard ; and these are estimated to contain about one-fifth part of the entire weight of the wheat grain. It is, unques- tionably, so far wasteful to remove these altogether from the flour ; and in

the case of the majority of people, this waste may be unnecessary, even on score of digesti- bility."t Fig- 1. This subject can also be rendered appa-

rent to the eye. If we make a cross section of a grain of wheat, or rye, and place it under the microscope, we perceive very distinct lay- ers in it as we examine from without inwards. The outer of them belong to the husk of the fruit and seed (a, in the annexed cut), and are separated as bran, in grinding. But the millstone does not separate so exact!;: as the eye may by means of the microscope, not even the knife of the vegetable anatomist, and thus with the bran is removed also the whole put i Us of the

as, and even some of the subjacent A glance at the figure shows, hoir-

\ A Treatise on Diet and Regimi q, by Yfca. U ■ ■ i » ■- v E) ibertlon, M. !\. ?ol. i. p. K>3.

Doc. No. 20. 5?

ever, at once, that the contents of the outer cells of the nucleus (b) are very different from those of the inner (c) ; for while the latter enclose a great quantity of starch and very little nitrogenous matter, in the outer layer of cells we find only the latter substance, which in the cereal grains usually receives the name of gluten. Thus the anatomical investigations of one of these corn grains at once explains why bread is so much the less nutritious, the more carefully the bran has been separated from the meal.*

There can therefore be little doubt that the removal of the bran is a serious injury to the flour ; and I have presented the above array of evidence on this point in the hope of directing^ public attention to it here, as has been done in various foreign countries.

After this, it will easily be inferred that I am not disposed to look with. much favor upon the plan proposed by Mr. Bentz for taking the outer coating or bran from wheat and other grains previously to grinding, f Inde- pendently of the considerations which have already been presented, it is far from being proved, as this gentleman asserts, that the mixture of the bran with the meal which results from the common mode of grinding is the chief cause of the souring of the flour in hot climates. On the contrary, the bran- is perhaps as little liable to undergo change as the fine flour, and then the moistening to which, as I am informed, the grain is subjected previously to- the removal of the husk, is still further objectionable, and must be followed by a most carefully conducted process of kiln-drying.

Nutritious Properties of various articles of Food,

There seems to be some difference of opinion in regard to the nutritious properties of various kinds of food. It is generally, however, agreed that those which contain the largest proportion of nitrogenous matters are the most nutritious. It is on this account that haricots, peas and beans, form, in some sort, substitutes for animal food. Tubers, roots, and even the seeds of the cereal grasses, are but moderately nutritious. If we see herbivorous animals fattening upon such articles, it is because, from their peculiar ©rgani- zation, they can consume them in large quantities. It is quite doubtful whether a man doing hard work could exist on bread exclusively. The instances which are given of countries where rice and potatoes form the sole articles of food of the inhabitants, are believed to be incomplete. Boussin- gault states that in Alsace, for example, the peasantry always associate their potato dish with a large quantity of sour or curdled milk; in Ireland with buttermilk. "The Indians of the Upper Andes do not by any means live on p@tatoes alone, as some travelers have said they do : at Quito, the daily food of the inhabitants is lorco, a compound of potatoes and a large quantity of cheese. Bice is often cited as one of the most nourishing articles of diet. I am satisfied, however, after having lived in countries where rice is largely consumed, that it is anything but a substantial, or, for its bulk, nutritious article of sustenance."! These statements are further confirmed by the observations of M. Lequerri, who, during a long residence in India,

* The Plant : a Biography ; by M. J. Schleiden, M. D., Professor of Botany in the Uni- versity of Jena. English translation, p. 54.

f Transactions of the New York State Agricultural Society for 1847, p. 190. In this- communication, Mr. Bentz does not describe the process which he adopts, but enume- rates some of its supposed advantages.

$ Rural Economy, Amer. edition, p. 409.

SS Doc. No. 20.

"paid particular attention to the manners and customs of the inhabitants of Pondicherri. "The food,'' says he, "is almost entirely vegetable, and rioe is the staple; the inferior castes only ever eat meat. But all eat Jcari, an article prepared with meat, fish, or vegetable, which is mixed with the rice, boiled in very little water. It is requisite to have seen the Indians at their meals to have any idea of the enormous quantity of rice which they will put into their stomachs. No European could cram so much at a time ; and they very commonly allow that rice alone will not nourish them. They very generally still eat a quantity of bread."*

In regard to the proportion of nutritiou^matter contained in grains of various kinds, it may be remarked that the tables which have been construct- ed as the results of various experiments are liable to an objection, which will be more particularly adverted to under another head. For example, two substances, by the process of ultimate analysis, may exhibit the same proportion of nitrogenous matter, and still differ very materially in their value as articles of food. Much depends on the digestibility of the form in vrhich this matter is presented to the digestive organs. A strong illustra- tion is afforded in the case of hay, the proportion of nutritive matter of which, about 9. 71, would certainly not represent its power of affording nour- ishment to the human system. It is in truth quite impossible to arrive at -any other than approximative results from the operations of chemistry, as to the amount of nutriment contained in a given quantity or weight of any article of food.f

It is perhaps not irrelevant to notice in this place some of the researches ivhich have recently been made upon fermentation, and particularly its effects in the manufacture of bread. It appears that when this process is brought about by the addition of yeast or leaven to the paste or dough, the character of the mass is materially altered. A larger or smaller proportion of the flour is virtually lost. According to Dr. William Gregory, the loss amounts to the very large proportion of one-sixteenth part of the whole of the flour. He says, "To avoid this loss, bread is now raised by means of carbonate of soda, or ammonia and a diluted acid, which are added to the dough, and the effect is perfectly satisfactory. Equally good or better bread is obtained, and the quantity of flour which will yield fifteen hundred loaves by fermen- tation, furnishes sixteen hundred by the new method, the sugar and fibrin (gluten) being saved. "J

Another author, Dr. R. D. Thomson, states, as the result of his experi- ments upon bread produced by the action of hydrochloric acid upon carbo- nate of soda, "that in a sack of flour there was a difference in favor of the unfermentcd bread to the amount of thirty lbs. thirteen ounces, or in round numbers, a sack of flour would produce one hundred and seven loaves of uirfermented bread, and only one hundred loaves of fermented bread of the same weight^ Hence it appears that in the sack of flour bv the common process of baking, seven loaves, or six and a half per cent, of the Hour, are driven into tlie air and l6st.''§

The only objection to the genera] introduction of this process seems to be the degree of care and accuracy required in properly adjusting the

respective (jualities and quantities of acid and alkali, and which could sel-

* Quoted by Boussingaulfc, Rural Economy, Ahum-, edition, p. no.

t A Treatise on Diet and Regimen, \<y Win. Benrj Robertson, M. IV, vol. i. p. 140.

% Outlines of Chemistry, ]>. 352.

cperimenta] Researches on the Food of Animals, fcc., p. I'M.

Doc. No. 20. 59

dom be attained eren by those who are largely engaged in the manufacture of bread.

I cannot leave this subject without adverting to a practice which has prevailed in England and France, and perhaps also in this country, of steeping wheat before sowing it in solutions of arsenic, sulphate of copper, and other poisonous preparations.

The result has been that injurious effects have often followed both to those who are employed in sowing such grain, and to those who have used the bread manufactured from it. The great importance of the subject led to the appointment of a commission at Rouen, in France, in December, 1842, having for its object to determine the best process of preventing the smut in wheat, and to ascertain whether other means less dangerous than those above noticed were productive of equally good results. The labors of this commission extended over the years 1843-'44-'45, and the experi- ments were repeated two years following on the farm of Mr. Fauchet, one of the commission, at Boisquilaume, in the department of the Seine Inferieure.

The results arrived at by this commission are — 1st. That it is not best to sow seed without steeping. 2d. That it is best to make use of the sul- phate of soda and lime process, inasmuch as it is more simple and econo- mical, in no way injurious to the health, and yields the soundest and most productive wheat. 3d. That the use of arsenic, sulphate of copper, ver- digris, and other poisonous preparations, should be interdicted by the gov- ernment.*

Composition of Wheat and Wheat Flour, and the various modes of determin- ing their Nutritive Value.

In my former report, it was stated that the analyses of the various sam- ples of wheat, the results of which were there given, had been chiefly directed to the determining the amount of rough gluten which they contained. My reasons for adopting this plan and the arguments in favor of its general accuracy as compared with other modes of analysis, and especially that by which the ultimate composition is ascertained, were also detailed. A more full examination of this subject has served only to strengthen the opinion already expressed, that for the great purpose to be answered by these re- searches, the process which I have adopted is, to say the least, as free from objection as any other, and if carefully and uniformly carried out, will truly represent the relative values of the several samples of wheat flour. As this is a matter of much consequence in a practical point of view, I trust I shall be excused for introducing some additional facts in regard to it.

The term gluten was originally applied to the gray, viscid, tenacious and elastic matter which is obtained by subjecting wheat flour to the continuous action of a current of water. But it appears that this is a mixture of fibrine and caseine, with what is now called glutine, and a peculiar oily or fatty matter. Now these substances may be separated from each other, but the processes employed for this purpose are tedious, and to insure accuracy the various solvents must be entirely pure — a point which, especially in the case of alcohol and ether, is not ordinarily easy to be attained. This will be rendered still more evident by a reference to a French process which will hereafter be noticed.

But were it much less difficult in every case accurately to separate the

* Gardeners' Chronicle (London), January 6th, 1849, pp. 10 and 11.

60 Doc. No. 20. T'i

»

constituents of gluten, it -would not in my opinion be of the least practical utility. It is to the peculiar mechanical property of this gluten that wheat flour owes its superior power of detaining the carbonic acid engendered by fermentation, and thus communicating to it the vesicular spongy structure so characteristic of good bread.* It may also be added, that the results of more than one hundred trials have satisfied me that a diminution or loss of elasticity in the gluten is the surest index of the amount of injury which the sample of flour has sustained. Whether, therefore, the sample contains a certain proportion of nitrogen, or whether it contains albumen, fibrine and caseine in sufficient quantity, it may still want the very condition which is essential to the manufacture of good bread. My objection, therefore, to the mere determination, however accurate, of the proportion of nitrogen con- tained in wheat flour, or of the various principles which form the gluten, is that it does not represent the value of the various samples for the only use to which they are applied, viz. — the making of bread. The remarks of Mulder, the celebrated Dutch chemist, upon the subject of manures, are so applicable to this point, that I cannot refrain from quoting them. " It has," he says, " become almost a regular custom to determine the value of manures by the quantity of nitrogen they yield by ultimate analysis. This method is entirely erroneous ; for it is based upon the false principle, that by putrefaction all nitrogenous substances are immediately converted into ammonia, carbonic acid, and water ! But these changes sometimes require a number of years. Morphine, for example, is prepared by allowing opium to putrefy ; and the process for preparing leucin, a substance which con- tains 10.72 of nitrogen, is to bring cheese into putrefaction. Cheese, there- fore, does not perhaps in a number of years resolve itself into carbonic acid, ammonia, and water, but produces a crystalline substance, which con- tains no ammonia. Hence the proportion of nitrogen yielded by manures is not a proper measure of their talue, and therefore this mode of estimating that value ought to be discontinued. "f

We infer, therefore, that the proportion of nitrogen furnished by food of various kinds is not the true measure of their nutritious value, and can- not for practical purposes take the place of that process by which the amount of rough gluten is determined.

No better illustration can be given of the uncertainty which attends the inferences drawn from the ultimate composition, than the fact heretofore stated in regard to hay, the nutritive value of which is placed in the tables containing the results of these analyses, at a figure nearly the same as that of ordinary wheat flour.J

In the paper on the "Composition of Wheat," by M. Peligot,§ to which I have already referred, the author gives the results of the various analyses which he has made, and details the process he adopted.

Aware of the complex and difficult nature of the examination as conducted by him, he seems to doubt in regard to some of the results given in his table. In the fourteen samples which he analyzed, the proportion of water ranges from 13.2 to 15.2, which is a rather higher average than is yielded by our

* Experimental Researches on the Food of Animals, &c, hy R. D. Thomson, M. P., p. 156.

t Chemistry of Vegetable and Animal Physiology, translated hy Prof. J. F. W. Johnflton, p. 684

t Sec Dr. R. 1>. Thomson's Experimental Researches on the Food of Animals, &o.

i Coxnptee Rendus, February 5th, L840,

Doc. No. 20. 61

American samples, especially those which have not been shipped across the Atlantic. Of the nitrogenous matter, soluble and insoluble, the proportions range fr@m 9.90 per cent, to 21.50 per cent.; the former being from a sample of very soft and white French wheat ; the latter from a very hard wheat with long grains, from Northern Africa, cultivated at Verrieres. Another sample from Egypt yielded 20.60 per cent, of these nitrogenous matters, both of which are very remarkable proportions.

In describing the process for ascertaining the amount of insoluble nitroge- nous matters, this author adverts to their estimation either by the quantity of nitrogen gas furnished, or of ammonia formed, the 1-ast being preferred for substances, which, like wheat, contain only a few hundredths of nitro- gen. The results which he obtained by this method were compared with those yielded by the direct extraction of the gluten by softening the farina under a small stream of witer. " These results," says he, " differ but little from each other when we operate upon wheat in good condition, although the gluten which we thus obtain holds some starch and fatty matter, while the starch which is carried away by the water contains also some gluten." The loss and gain, as I have already explained, and as has been proved by these and other comparisons, are nearly balanced, and the amount of rough gluten will therefore afford a fair exhibit of that of the insoluble nitrogenous matters in this grain.

The salts in the samples of wheat analyzed by M. Peligot, were either wanting or were in small proportion; while the amount of fatty matter ranged from 1.00 to 1.80 and 1.90 per cent.

These results agree very well with those which I have obtained. But it is probable that the proportion is liable to great variation, inasmuch as it is inferred that the fatty matter originates from starch through its exposure to the general deoxidizing influence which prevails in plants.*

There are also many difficulties attending the accurate determination of this matter, and which are probably the cause of the higher proportion often given. It is properly remarked by M. Peligot that the ether employed in this process should be free from water, and that the flour ought also to be very dry. By neglecting these precautions, we separate not only the fatty matter, but also a certain amount of matters soluble in the water, which is furnished as well by the wheat as by the ether.

It would not, I think, be difficult to point out some incorrect views enter- tained by this chemist, and more especially those which relate to the fatty matter. Some of his processes for the separation of various substances, if not faulty, require so many conditions for success as to render the results, at least in other hands, exceedingly uncertain.

But the capital error which he has committed is that concerning the bran, already adverted to, which he considers injurious to the flour, chiefly in consequence of the large proportion of fatty matter which it contains. 1 In regard to the soluble nitrogenous matter usually called albumen, from its resemblance to the animal substance of the same name, I have to remark, that in my trials the proportion has been found to be considerably