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 England) is a strong soil with a large proportion of clay.  But the question after all is, not whether these States cannot grow wheat, and in comparatively large quantities, for we know that while their lands are fresh, they can and do—­but whether, considering the hazard of the crop from winter-killing, the rust, the fly—­the risk from the two former being equal to a large per cent. premium of insurance, they are not likely to find their interest in grazing, in raising and feeding stock, instead of attempting to extend their wheat husbandry.  Lord Brougham has said, that grazing countries are always the most prosperous, and their population the most contented and happy.  The meat markets of Great Britain are likely to prove better and more