No. 115.

IN ASSEMBLY,

March 7, 1844.

REPORT

Of the Committee on Agriculture.

Mr. D. Lee, from the committee on agriculture, to whom was referred so much of the Governor's message as relates to Agriculture, and also the annual report of the New-York State Agricultural Society, embracing returns from forty-six county societies, has had those subjects under consideration, and respectfully submits the following

REPORT.

So far as your committee have been able to examine the manuscript essays and official reports made by the State and County Societies, they appear to be drawn up in strict conformity to existing laws, and therefore your committee do not feel at liberty to alter or abridge them in any respect. Taken as a whole, these documents contain a large amount of information of great practical value to the farming interest of the State. The Treatise of Mr. Gaylord on Insects Injurious to Field Crops, &c.; the Essay on the Introduction of New Agricultural Products, and on the Importance of the Geological Survey in its connexion with Practical Husbandry, &c., are worth many times the cost of publishing all the reports. Hitherto it has been customary to print ten times the usual number for the use of members of the Legislature and State Officers, 500 copies for the use of the State Agricultural Society, and twenty copies for each of the county societies. Believing that these documents will compare favorably with any that have [Assembly, No. 115.] [10 times.]

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preceded them from the same source, and are well calculated to render the agricultural labor of this great State more productive to the community at large, as well as more profitable to the cultivators of the earth, your committee do not hesitate to recommend the printing of the number of copies above named.

In his late message, the Governor says: "The number of acres of land charged with taxes in 1842, was 27,176,934, valued at $504,254,029." According to the State census of 1825, the number of acres under cultivation was 7,160,967. The same authority in 1835, gives the number at 9,655,426. At this time the number of acres under cultivation, probably, does not vary much from 11,000,000. According to the U. S. census of 1840, the number of persons actually employed in rural pursuits, was 455,954; while the whole number actually engaged in manufactures, the mechanical arts, trade, internal, coasting and foreign commerce, was 207,172. These brief statistics demonstrate the important truth that Agriculture is the great productive interest of the State of New-York.

Your committee deem it not out of place to inquire whether the half million of laboring people, who cultivate eleven millions of acres of fair farming lands, do now realise as large a return for their capital and industry, as is practicable?

In the returns of the census of 1840, the wheat grown in this State, (12,286,418 bushels,) was estimated at $1.20 per bushel; corn (10,972,286 bushels,) at 75 cents; oats (20,675,847 bushels,) at 44 cents; and hay (3,127,047 tons,) at $10 per ton. At these prices, which are now too high by one-third, the aggregate products of all our rural industry were valued at $109,071,416. Reduce this gross sum to $77,000,000, as it ought to be, and divide that by 11,000,000, the number of acres in cultivation, and the average crop was worth only seven dollars per acre.

From considerable experience, much study and reflection, your committee are of the opinion that the 11,000,000 acres of cultivated lands in this State, might be made to yield, without any additional expense, an average of three dollars per acre more of the valuable fruits of the earth, than they now do. In other words, the same labor, which is now measurably lost through ignorance of the laws of nature, through inattention to the constituent elements of all cultivated plants, and of the affinities that govern their chemical and organic combinations in

practical agriculture, might, by the aid of plain and available science, secure to our farmers ten dollars' worth of agricultural products, where they now get but seven dollars' worth. For what purpose does the husbandman toil so hard throughout the year? Is it not to transform certain elements of earth, air and water, into cultivated plants; and these again, into domestic animals, beef, pork, mutton, butter, cheese and wool? And what are these elements of earth, air and water, which the well or ill applied labor of the farmer changes into wheat and other grain, into grass and roots? Where is the practical agriculturalist to find the raw material of one good ripe wheat plant; and how must the necessary ingredients be combined, and applied to the soil, so as to realise the largest crop at the least expense?

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To say nothing of the gaseous and earthy elements necessary to make good firm wheat straw, we now take over 12,000,000 bushels of the raw material of wheat bread from our fields every year, and never stop to enquire whether this system of culture will or will not rob our wheat lands of all their bread-bearing elements. Not one particle in a thousand of the elements of bread, after entering human mouths, ever finds way back again on to the field from whence it was taken. If we are certain that the benevolent Author of our being will create anew, annually, 12,000,000 bushels of those particular ingredients which make that amount of wheat, and will keep good all the elements of straw not returned after the harvest, then perhaps our fields may not suffer by continuous cropping without renovation, But Heaven will not create one particle of matter for our especial benefit, though the two-and-a-half millions of people in New-York shall waste the raw material of 50,000,000 bushels of grain every year, until they shall have no more to waste.

To prevent farther loss, and regain all the fertilizing elements taken from our cultivated lands since their first settlement, are objects of great public importance. Man is indebted to agricultural science for the invaluable discovery that not far from 97 per cent of all the elements of cultivated plants exist in the air in exhaustless quantities. These are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, the two latter forming water. The combustion of wood and coal, the respiration of all animals, fermentation and the decomposition of all organic matter throw into the atmosphere a vast amount of the ingredients necessary for the reconstruction of vegetables and animals. To say nothing of water and its elements, which play an important part in all organic structures,

carbon is the largest and most expensive element in the production of plants and domestic animals. It is the basis of vegetable mould-" the fat of the land "-and, combined with the constituents of water, forms veritable fat and butter. It is some consolation to know that there are no less than seven tons of pure carbon diffused through the air over every acre of land, whether barren or fertile, upon the habitable globe.

The earthy part of the wheat plant forming less than 3 per cent of its solid substance, consists of silica, (flint,) lime, potash, soda, magnesia, alumina, (the basis of clay,) chlorine, sulphur, phosphorus, and a trace of iron. All these minerals are indispensable to the production of one good wheat plant. Hence, if a farmer had an abundance of all the other elements in his field to grow forty bushels of wheat on an acre, and it should be destitute of phosphorus, that defect would be fatal to the crop. There is good reason to believe that if a practical wheat grower will restore to his field every year all the raw material of that bread-bearing plant, a large crop can be harvested from the same soil year after year, as well as to let it lie idle, or to cultivate other grain for three or four years and then grow wheat again. Persons unacquainted with the very compound nature of wheat, are apt to imagine that the application of one fertilizing element, lime for instance, ought to suffice to produce a good crop. They are ignorant of the fact that every kernel and stem of wheat has twelve other indispensable ingredients in its composition. Millions of days of hard labor are annually thrown away in New-York alone, in a vain attempt to transmute one mineral into another. Our farmers are searching for some strange philosopher's stone that will change lime into potash, potash into magnesia, magnesia into flint, flint into clay, clay into sulphur, sulphur into iron, iron into phosphorus, phosphorus into nitrogen, nitrogen into carbon and carbon into oxygen. When a man can make the half of a thing equal to the whole, then he may raise a good crop of wheat where his soil lacks one-half of the elements of that grain.

Your committee believe it practicable to increase the annual products of our present rural industry 33 per cent, without the aid of one dollar of additional capital; that is, they believe that full one-third of all agricultural labor is literally thrown away by its misapplication. The uniform laws of nature will not vary nor accommodate the needless ignorance of man. Hence it follows that man must apply his labor in strict conformity to the unerring laws that govern the changes of matter, or toil on through life giving two days' work for those necessaries and

comforts, which an understanding of the laws of nature would have secured to him in exchange for one day's work. The whole doctrine of eternal hard work and penurious living as the best means of acquiring wealth or the comforts of life, your committee deem unsound. The inevitable effect of this popular system is to degrade and brutify, rather than to elevate our race. Mere muscular labor, mere mechanical power, no matter how great its force, without adequate knowledge to guide and direct it, is far more likely to act wrong than right, for the simple reason that there are five wrong ways to do almost every thing, where there is one right way.

All men have intellectual organs that require development and peculiar nourishment, not less than stomachs which need daily food. Has not the Creator of man manifested his approbation of human efforts to acquire wisdom, even worldly wisdom, by making the ignorant in all climes, and in all ages of the world the servants of the wise?

A knowledge of the arts of ploughing, sowing and reaping may do for the purpose of wearing out a productive farm, but something more is necessary to enable its owner to give back annually to each of its cultivated fields the precise elements removed by the harvest, and that too at the least possible expense.

Suppose a farmer now cultivates six acres of land in wheat, to harvest 100 bushels, how is he to manage so as to grow 133 bushels at the same expense? If he can raise 33 bushels per acre on four acres, that will give him the amount desired and save the whole cost of cultivating two acres of land. This saving may be set down at $8 per acre, which will give $16 surplus to be expended in purchasing the raw material to produce the extra 66 bushels of wheat on the four acres to be cultivated by a new process. As about 94 per cent of ripe wheat plants consist of carbon and water, charcoal must be an important element in fertilizing the soil. Of the other 6 per cent about one-half is nitrogen, and the other moiety is made up of silica, potash, soda, magnesia, alumina, phosphorus, sulphur, chlorine, and a trace of iron. Let the wheat grower take 100 bushels of charcoal, grind it fine in a bark mill or pulverize it well with flails on a threshing floor, and add thereto five bushels of ground plaster. This would not cost in most farming districts in this State over $7, and if the coal and gypsum be placed in a vat or large tub and saturated with the urine of cattle, or partly moistened with the liquid excretions of the human species, and have five bushels of leached ashes mixed with the mass, it will contain all