In former years the prices of grain in the United States were controlled by the European markets, and consequently the grain trade of the Western States was governed by the produce merchants in the Atlantic ports, but lately the whole order of things seems to have been reversed, as breadstuffs of every kind were dearer in the Western than in the Eastern markets. There were several reasons for this anomaly. On account of the ravages of insects, and other causes which we have alluded to, farmers were induced to place very little reliance on the wheat crop, and many were driven into other branches of husbandry, and in some places wheat became scarce. Add to this the rapid increase of the population which created a local demand for all kinds of food, and caused immense quantities of breadstuffs to be required in places where a few years before there was no market for anything. The rapid and extraordinary growth of Detroit and all the Western cities, and the formation of new settlements, created a home market for Western produce, for the population of cities being consumers of the fruits of the land, instead of producers, have always a wonderful effect on the markets of their localities, and the pioneers in the forest or prairie must for a time depend on the older settlements for subsistence. From a defective system of agriculture the soil of the old States has been deteriorating for several years. In Massachusetts the hay crop declined twelve per cent. from 1840 to 1850, notwithstanding the addition of 90,000 acres of mowing lands and the grain crop depreciated 6000 bushels, although no less than 6000 acres had been added to the tillage lands of that State. In 1840 the wheat crop of New York was about twelve and a quarter millions of bushels, and only nine millions in 1850, a decrease of 25 per cent., while the Indian corn in the same State increased during the same period from about ten to twenty millions of bushels. The harvest of 1859, found several parts of the country entirely destitute of flour, and the farmers with a fixed and firm determination never again to allow themselves to run out of the staff of life.