improvement. If every man who wins his livelihood from the soil, would appropriate the experience of his fellow-cultivators by connecting himself at once with a farmers' club, and subscribing promptly to an agricultural journal, causing it to be taken and read in his family, the effect on the soil and crops of the ensuing season would be marvellous and magical all over the country.

The valuable facts and experiments, and the variety of information which abound in these journals, produce their legitimate results, in improving, elevating, and enriching the farmer, with just as much certainty as does the manure applied to his crops, or the tillage bestowed on the soil. The conductors and writers of this branch of the press devote themselves with untiring industry to collect and disseminate the opinions and experience of our wisest practical men, and the scientific principles laid down by the highest authorities.

It is not easy to determine how many of these journals are at present taken and read throughout the country, but it seems probable that the number of subscribers, putting all the journals together, would not much exceed one-third of a million, which is less than one man in ten of the agricultural proprietors, and scarcely one in forty of the farming population. It must be admitted that this ratio of readers to the whole number of cultivators is discreditably low. In an agricultural community numbering four million families, there ought to be, at the least calculation, one million subscribers to this class of periodicals; nor

is it easy to assign any reason why this number should not yet be reached before the period of the next general census. We should then have three reading farmers where we now have one, and the effect upon agriculture which such an increase of intelligence would everywhere produce it is scarcely possible to

overrate.

It rests with you, brother farmers, to introduce this new era of diffused intelligence, by doubling or tripling, as you easily may, the circulation of the agricultural press. Should you enter thoroughly into the spirit of this subject, the purpose would be accomplished. You would thereby change the aspect and condition of fields and farms all over the land, imparting to every meadow a brighter green, and to the fruits of autumn a deeper tinge of gold. You would communicate ideas to ploughshares, convert the hoe into a calculator, and endow the spade with thought.

What effect this would produce upon the future grain crops of the country, it is not difficult to perceive. Even without counting any increase from this cause, the corn crop for 1870, as will be seen by the estimate on another page, is likely to exceed a thousand million dollars in value. The grain itself, according to that estimate, will be sufficient to feed not only our own people, but half the population of Europe in addition, for more than twelve months; while the money value of such annual crops would, in the course of three years, suffice to extinguish our national debt, and leave a balance in the treasury.

It seems to me, Farmers of America, that such a

record will be the best possible commentary on the Great American Rebellion, and the best possible rebuke to the numerous tribe of croakers and prophets of evil abroad, who have so long and steadily been gloating over the approaching dissolution of our Union.

That the citizen soldiers of this country, after bringing to a successful close a civil war so formidable and terrific, should have laid aside promptly, in the very hour of triumph, the arms which they had covered with glory, and gone back quietly to their cherished homes, and to the beneficent occupations of peace; that a class of men notoriously ardent and susceptible should abandon at once and with complacency, the exciting scenes of martial life, and the fields of all their fresh renown, satisfied with a sense of duty performed and a country saved; that so soon after turning their backs upon the field of battle, they should exhibit to the world a countless array of harvest fields stretching over a thousand hills and valleys, and covering a land redeemed by their valor and now embellished by their toil-this indeed is a moral spectacle instructive to the world, and more to be prized than all the material prosperity and affluence which it indicates.

LIBRARI

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA.

EXTENT AND VALUE OF THE CORN

CROP.

GENERAL VIEW.-The extent of the corn crop of this country, and its importance in an economical and commercial view, have risen to a scale of magnitude that overshadows all other crops. It appears, from the census of 1860, that the corn crop of that year was over eight hundred million bushels, while the product of wheat, rye, oats, barley, buckwheat, peas, beans, and potatoes, taken in their entire aggregate, was less than that of Indian corn by more than three hundred million bushels. Compared with the wheat crop alone, the product of corn is very nearly five times greater; and when the comparison is extended beyond our own country, it is found that the corn crop of the United States is about equal to the wheat crop of the whole earth.

The following are the decennial returns of Indian corn, as given in the census tables of the last three decades:

It appears, from this comparison, that the increase from 1840 to 1850 was nearly two hundred and fifteen million bushels, and from 1850 to 1860 it was nearly two hundred and forty-seven million bushels. For the entire period of twenty years, the gain was over four hundred and sixty-one million bushels, being at the rate of a little over six per cent. a year, or sixty per cent. for each decade.

The following table exhibits the corn crop of 1860 in comparison with some of the other leading crops of the country:

The aggregate number of bushels for these eight crops is thirteen hundred and sixty-four million, fourhundred and eighty-seven thousand, eight hundred and eighty-four, making an average of over one hundred and seventy million bushels for each crop.

The returns of the corn crop for the several States and Territories for 1850 and 1860, are indicated in the following table, in which the States are arranged in the order of the alphabet and not in the order of their yield.