“It may give a just idea of the general richness of the soil to state, that we have frequently heard of instances where 50 bushels of wheat per acre have been produced on a farm, even where the stumps (which would probably occupy one eighth of the surface of the field) have not been eradicated; and, in the district of Newcastle, many examples may be found wherein wheat has been raised on the same ground for 16 or 18 years successively, without the application of manure! The general average of the returns of wheat crops, however, throughout Upper Canada, is probably not more than 25 bushels per acre, owing to the space occupied by stumps, and the indifferent skill of some of the farmers. The winter wheats are found to be the most productive, and they weigh the heaviest: the best seldom exceeds 64 lb. or 65 lb., to the Winchester bushel, although we have known several instances of higher weights. “Of Indian corn or maize, from 60 to 80 bushels per acre is not an uncommon return; and of pumpkins, of the largest kinds, we have instances of more than a cwt. being produced from a single seed. But there cannot be a more certain indication of the depth and richness of the soil than the fine growth of the timber which it produces; and we have not unfrequently measured particular trees of that species of white oak, which grows in low moist places, and which is usually called swamp oak, that gave circumferences of sixteen to seventeen and eighteen feet, and an altitude of from thirty to forty, and even fifty feet to the first bough. And we have more than once, on the rich lands to the northward of Rice Lake, found white pine trees, that give a diameter of five feet, and altitude of two hundred! These are facts that determine at once the depth, richness, and vegetative power of the soil, since those giants of the forest are not nourished solely by the heavens which they pierce, but also by the earth from whence they spring. “Vegetation is so rapid in this country, that barley sown in July has been reaped in the second week of September, for several years successively, and on land that was deemed poor and exhausted; and a more abundant crop has been seldom witnessed.