Complaint is widely made of a decrease in the relative population of our rural districts; and not without reason, or, at least, plausibility. I presume the Census of 1870 will return no more farmers in the State of New York, and probably some fewer in New England, than were shown by the Census of 1860. The very considerable augmentation of the number of their people will be found living wholly in the cities and incorporated villages. I doubt whether there are more farmers in the State of New York to-day than there were in 1840, though the total population has meantime doubled. Many farms have been transformed into country-seats for city bankers, merchants, and lawyers; others have been consolidated, so that what were formerly two or three, now constitute but one; and, though every body says, "Our farms are too large for our capital," "We run over too much land," etc., etc., yet, I can hear of few farms that have been, or are expected to be, divided, except into village or city lots; while the prevalent tendency is still the other way. An inefficient farmer dies heavily in debt, or is sold out by the sheriff: his farm is rarely divided between two purchasers, while it is quite often absorbed into the estate of some thrifty neighbor; and thus small farmers are selling out and moving westward much oftener than large ones. Such are the obvious facts: now for some of the reasons: I. Our State, like New England, was originally all but covered by a heavy growth of forest. The removal of this timber involved very much hard work, most of which has been done in this century, and much of it by the present generation. When I first traversed Chautauqua County, forty-three years ago, from two-thirds to three-fourths of her acres must have been still covered with the primeval forest--a tall, heavy growth of Beech, Maple, Hemlock, White Pine, etc., which yielded very slowly to the efforts of the average chopper. Many a pioneer gave half his working hours for twenty years to the clearing off of Timber, Fencing, cutting out roads, etc., and had not sixty acres in arable condition at the last. Outside of the villages, the population of that county was probably as great in 1830 as it is to-day, though the annual production of her tillage was not half what it now is. Her farms are now made; her remaining woodlands are worth about as much per acre as her tillage; there is now comparatively little timber-cutting, or land-clearing; and two-thirds of the pioneers, or their sons who inherited their farms, have sold out, or been sold out, and pushed further westward. Meantime, Grazing and Dairying have extensively supplanted Grain-growing; and farmers who found more work than they could do on 60 or 80 acres, now manage 160 to 320 acres with ease. I do not say that they ought not to farm better; I only state the facts that they thrive by this dairy-farming, and are not exhausting their lands. And what is true of Chautauqua is measurably true of half the rural