whom they were originally bought, and transported back East to improve the breed of their stock. The wool becomes of a finer texture when produced in our State, also an increase in size of the carcass of the sheep." The advantages which our present Catholic colonies afford, abounding in nutritious grasses and the best quality of wild hay lands, will we trust turn the attention of settlers to stock raising, butter packing and cheese factories, and we are informed that some enterprising parties are going to establish one of the latter at Clontarf, in Swift County Colony. Farming to be prosperous the industry on the farm must be diversified; there should be rotation of crops. It will not do to depend altogether on wheat or to be too ambitious to have a great breadth of it under cultivation; not an acre more than the farmer knows he will be well able to have out of the ground in good season, making no chance calculations. CROP STATISTICS. WHEAT, OATS, POTATOES, CORN, HAY, SORGHUM, FRUITS. In 1849, Minnesota was organized into a territory, and the following year, 1850, she had under cultivation 1,900 acres of land. In 1877, she had 3,000,000 acres. In these twenty-seven years, during which the breadth of her cultivated lands has increased over one thousand five hundred fold, the quality and average quantity per acre of all the great staple crops have been equally satisfactory, until we find her to-day, taking the foremost place as an agricultural State. To quote from the writings of the Hon. Pennock Pusey, than whom there is no more upright gentleman nor one more qualified to deal with statistics, we find that "According to the census of 1870, the entire wheat product of New England was sufficient to feed her own people only three weeks! That of New York sufficient for her own consumption six months; that of Pennsylvania, after feeding her own people, afforded no surplus; while the surplus of Ohio was but 3,000,000 bushels for that year, and for the past six years her wheat crop has fallen below her own consumption. In the ten years ending in 1870, the wheat crop of these States decreased 6,500,000 bushels. "In the light of these facts, the achievements of Minnesota in wheat growing, as well as her untaxed capacity for the continued and increased production of that grain, assume a proud pre-eminence." This is not too high praise for Minnesota, when we find the great State of Ohio for the last six years failing to raise sufficient wheat for her own consumption, while Minnesota with but 2,232,988 acres under wheat, has, after bountifully supplying her own population, exported in 1877 over fifteen million of bushels.