perseverance, and sagacity that distinguish our Yankee friends, seem now to be all directed towards effecting a change of system in the management of land; and the true question is, not whether the hitherto laggard progress of American agriculture is to be quickened in future, but whether we shall be able to keep pace with it. [4] Vol. ii. p. 389. But then Professor Johnston tells us that improvement is expensive, and that every process for reviving the dormant powers of the soil, and preserving their activity, must necessarily be attended with an addition to the price of the produce, which will thus prevent its coming into competition with that of England. This view rests upon a fallacy, which we are sure the author must have drawn from his reading in political economy, and not from his experience as an agriculturist. It is an off-shoot from the rent-theory, (the pestilent root of so much error and confusion,) which, however, we shall not notice at present, further than by affirming, in direct contradiction to it, that improvements do _not_ necessarily, nor generally, involve an increase of price. Even those which require the greatest outlay--even a complete system of arterial drainage all over the State of New York, instead of adding to the cost of wheat, may very probably reduce it, as it has certainly done in this country. But most of the improvements readily available in the Eastern States involve scarcely any expenditure at all. The most obvious and effectual is to save and apply the manure, which is now wasted or thrown away; and when that proves insufficient, abundant supplies of mineral manures are easily procurable. On the exhausted wheat-lands of Virginia, a single dressing of lime or marl generally doubles the first crop. Deposits of gypsum, and of the valuable mineral phosphate of lime, seem to be abundant both in New York and New Jersey. Again, in the former State, where the common practice is to plough to a depth of _not more than four inches_, the simple expedient of putting in the plough a few inches deeper would of itself add one-half to the return of wheat over a very large district. On the whole, so far from seeing any reason to anticipate, with Professor Johnston, a material reduction in the quantity of our wheat imports from the States, we look rather to see it increased; and, at all events, we have no hesitation in saying, that to encourage our English farmers to expect a cessation of competition from that quarter is to deceive them with very groundless hopes. We have already dwelt at considerable length on this topic, both because of the prominent place it occupies in Professor Johnston's volumes, and of the notice which his speculations upon it have attracted in this country.