loam," "clay subsoil," &c., shows Ohio to
possess a fine natural wheat soil, if indeed, alter thirty years of
a generally successful wheat husbandry, such additional testimony or
confirmation was necessary.

Michigan has also been successful in the cultivation of wheat. Her
burr-oak openings are unsurpassed in producing wheat. They are
intervening ridges between low grounds, or marshes and bodies of
water, and their location not generally considered very healthy. A
doubt has also been suggested as to whether this soil, being a
clayey loam, resting on a sandy and gravelly subsoil, is likely to
wear as well as some other portions of the fertile soil of the
State. The Commissioner of Patents puts her crop for 1848 at
10,000,000 of bushels, which is equal to 231/2 bushels to each
inhabitant! By the census of 1840, the population of Michigan was
212,267; number of bushels of wheat, 2,157,108. Her population in
1848 is estimated at 412,000. While she has barely doubled her
population, she has, according to the above estimate, more than
_quadrupled_ her production of wheat--increased it at the rate of
about one million bushels a year for eight consecutive years, making
the quantity she grows to each head of her population _more than
double_ that of any State in the Union.

We can at least say, and appeal to the past history of the country
to show it, that for a period of more than one hundred years, the
supply of the Atlantic wheat States has generally been constant, and
for the most part abundant. They have furnished the "staff of life"
to several generations of men, and cotemporary with it, an annual
amount for export, that materially assisted in regulating the
exchanges of the country.

England requires for her own consumption, upon the average of years,
somewhere about 32,000,000 bushels of wheat more than she produces.
The average annual entries of foreign wheat for consumption in the
United Kingdom, for the sixteen years ending with 1845, were about
nine and a half million bushels. Inasmuch as the average number of
acres in wheat crop were in 1846 about 4,600,000, the average produce
142,200,000 bushels, or over 30 bushels to the acre--an improvement in
the harvest to the extent of two bushels per acre, will destroy the
demand, and a deficiency to that extent will double it. Now as there
is an available surplus