red moors" of Maryland and Virginia.

Much of their wheat, too, is spring wheat, sown often on land where
the fall crop had winter-killed, increasing the number of bushels
much more than the value of the crop. I have heard it estimated
that full one-third of all the wheat shipped from Chicago was of
this description. Chicago is their great wheat depot. Several
millions of bushels are shipped from this point, _the contributions
from parts of three States_, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Illinois; and
which concentration of their joint product at this new western city,
or something else, seems to have imparted to each and all these
states the reputation of great wheat-growing states, though they
are, in fact, with the advantage of a virgin soil, behind several of
the western states, and two at least of the eastern or Atlantic
States. The geological explorations of the Hon. Robert Dale Owen,
undertaken under the authority of Congress, throws much light on the
character of the soil of Wisconsin and Iowa, and the description
given undoubtedly characterizes much of that region of country. The
specific gravity of the soil, Mr. Owen states to be remarkably
_light_; but what he represents to be a "striking feature in the
character of the Iowa and Wisconsin soils, is the _entire absence,
in the most of the specimens of clay, and in a large proportion of
silex_." Again, he speaks of their being particularly adapted to the
growth of the sugar-beet, which he truly says, "flourishes best in a
_loose fertile mould_." Again, he detected no phosphates; but they
might be there, as the _virgin_ soil produced good wheat. So does
the virgin soil of most of the prairie land.--"The soil was rich in
geine," &c. But I submit that this does not describe a wheat soil,
hardly in any one particular. Liebig tells us, that "however great
the proportion of _humus_ in a soil, it does not necessarily follow
it will produce wheat"--and cites the country of Brazil.

Again, he adds, "how does it happen that wheat does not flourish on
a sandy soil (which much of the soil of these states is described to
be), and that a calcareous soil is also unsuitable to its growth,
unless it be mixed with a considerable quantity of clay?"

The late Mr. Colman, in his _European Agriculture_, states, that
"the soil preferred for wheat (in Eng