s, or the amount exported, after supplying our
own wants. This, for the fiscal year 1848, being the crop of 1847,
amounted, in flour and wheat, to twelve millions two hundred and
ninety-four thousand one hundred and seventy-five bushels, although
Mr. Burke's figures would show a surplus of some forty millions!
That there was not, and never has been any such surplus in the
country is very evident, for the foreign demand was all the time
good, and drew away all we had to part with.

The crop of 1848 was, undoubtedly, one of the best and largest we
have ever grown; yet I have ascertained, by application at the
registrar's office, that the exports for the fiscal year 1842,
amounted in wheat to but 1,527,534 bushels, and in flour to
2,108,013 barrels, or less by 226,676 bushels than the exports of
1848. Twelve millions is comparatively a small surplus in a
favorable season, for a country with a population of twenty-two
millions of inhabitants. The loss of a small per cent. in an
unfavorable season would at once sink this excess.

Let us now notice more in detail the different sections of our
country as adapted to the growth of wheat.

The New England States, some of them aided in their recent
enterprises by bounties offered by the state governments, have
failed to insure such success as is likely to encourage them to
continue the culture of wheat; or, at all events, to induce them to
aim at increasing their product to any considerable extent, since,
as one of their own farmers candidly states, "the attempt to grow a
crop of wheat is an experiment."

The States south of North Carolina, and inclusive of a part of
Delaware, have never heretofore succeeded in growing wheat to any
considerable extent, though there were periods in their
history--before the general introduction of the culture of
cotton--when, if it had been practicable to make the cereal one of
their staples, they would certainly have done so. Besides the common
dangers from rust and blight, the fly, and sometimes the frost--as
the past season--they have a most formidable enemy in the weevil. In
Upper Georgia, in the Cherokee country in particular, wheat will
probably be cultivated to some extent, and a limited cultivation of
it by the planters for their own use will probably continue in
several of the southern stat