Chili | 5,977| 5,129| 2,848| 4,327 South America | 2,128| —­ | 40| 200 West Indies | 4,902| 3,984| 1,702| 4,079 Africa | 25,728| 4,617| 5,524| 5,430 North-west Coast | 764| 1,180| 858| 2,593 Other ports | 29,866| 35,017| 18,949| 19,158 |---------|---------|---------|--------- Total—­Barrels |4,382,496|2,108,013|1,385,448|2,202,335 |---------|---------|---------|--------- Average price | 5.95| 5.35| 5.00| 4.77 -------------------------+---------+---------+---------+----
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Wheat, where the soil and the climate are adapted to its growth, and the requisite progress has been made in its culture, is decidedly preferred to all other grains, and, next to maize, is the most important crop in the United States, not only on account of its general use for bread, but for its safety and convenience for exportation.  It is not known to what country it is indigenous, any more than any other cultivated cereals, all of which, no doubt, have been essentially improved by man.  By some, wheat is considered to have been coeval with the creation, as it is known that upwards of a thousand years before our era it was cultivated, and a superior variety had been attained.  It has steadily followed the progress of civilisation from the earliest times, in all countries where it would grow.  In 1776 there was entailed upon America an enduring calamity, in consequence of the introduction of the Hessian or wheat fly, which was supposed to have been brought from Germany in some straw, employed in the debarkation of Howe’s troops on the west end of Long Island.  From that point the insect gradually spread in various directions, at the rate of twenty or thirty miles a year, and the wheat of the entire regions east of the Alleghanies is now more or less infested with the larva, as well as in large portions of the States bordering on the Ohio and Mississippi, and on the great Lakes; and so great have been the ravages of these insects that the cultivation of this grain has in many places been abandoned.

The geographical range of the wheat region in the Eastern Continent and Australia, lies principally between the 30th and 60th parallels of north latitude, and the 30th and 40th degrees south, being chiefly confined to France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Prussia, Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain, Ireland, Northern and Southern Africa, Tartary, India, China, Australia, Van Diemen’s Land, and Japan.  Along the Atlantic portions of the Western Continent, it embraces the tract lying between the 30th and 50th parallels, and in the country westward of the Rocky Mountains, one or two more degrees further north.  Along the west coast of South America, as well as in situations within the torrid zone, sufficiently elevated above the level of the sea, and properly irrigated by natural or artificial means, abundant crops are often produced.