"This loss of income is ten millions of dollars, and equal to sinking a capital of one hundred and sixty-six million six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars a year, paying six per cent. annual interest. That improved farming lands may justly be regarded as capital, and a fair investment when paying six per cent. interest, and perfectly safe, no one will deny. This deterioration is not unavoidable, for thousands of skilful farmers have taken fields, poor in point of natural productiveness, and, instead of diminishing their fertility, have added ten cents an acre to their annual income, over and above all expenses. If this wise and improving system of rotation tillage and husbandry were universally adopted, or applied to the one hundred million acres now being exhausted, it would be equivalent to creating each year an additional capital of one hundred and sixty-six millions six hundred and sixty-six thousand dollars, and placing it in permanent real estate, where it would pay six per cent. annual interest. For all practical purposes, the difference between the two systems is three hundred, and thirty-three millions three hundred and thirty-three thousand dollars a year to the country. "Eight million acres [in the State of New York] are in the hands of three hundred thousand persons, who still adhere to the colonial practice of extracting from the virgin soil all it will yield, so long as it will pay expenses to crop it, and then leave it in a thin, poor pasture for a term of years. Some of these impoverished farms, which seventy-five years ago produced from twenty to thirty bushels of wheat, on an average, per acre, now yield only from five to eight bushels. In an exceedingly interesting work entitled 'American Husbandry,' published in London in 1775, and written by an American, the following remarks may be found on page 98, vol. i.:--'Wheat, in many parts of the province, (New York,) yields a larger produce than is common in England. Upon good lands about Albany, where the climate is the coldest in the country, they sow two bushels and better upon an acre, and reap from _twenty_ to _forty_; the latter quantity, however, is not often had, but from twenty to _thirty_ are common; and with such bad husbandry as would not yield the like in England, and much less in Scotland. This is owing to the _richness_ and _freshness_ of the land.' "According to the State census of 1845, Albany county now produces only seven and a half bushels of wheat per acre, although its farmers are on tide water and near the capital of the State, with a good home market, and possess every facility for procuring the most valuable fertilizers. Dutchess county, also on the Hudson River, produces an average of only five bushels per acre; Columbia, six bushels; Rensselaer, eight; Westchester, seven; which is higher than the average of soils that once gave a return larger than the wheat lands of England even with 'bad husbandry.'