Excerpt from The Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, Vol. 1: Volume the First; 1840 I. - On the present State of the Science of Agriculture in England. By Philip Pusey, Esq., M.P., F.R. and G.S. Read March 13, 1839. Though the national importance of husbandry will be at once admitted by every one, it may be well at the outset of our undertaking not to content ourselves with a general notion of that importance, but to look for a moment at some of the items which constitute its annual value. The wheat produced in England and Wales is estimated by Mr. Mac Culloch, one year with another, at 12,350,000 quarters. This single head of produce, therefore, at an average price of 50s., will amount to nearly 31 million pounds sterling, yearly. The oats and beans have been reckoned at 13,500,000 quarters, and will give another head of 17 1/2 millions sterling per annum. The grass-lands, again, are supposed to yield, year by year, produce worth very nearly 60 millions sterling, (59,500,000.) The practical inference to be drawn from these large numbers is obviously this, - that, if by any improved process it be possible to add even in a small proportion to the average acreable produce either of arable or pasture land, this increase, small as it may seem, may be in fact a very large addition to our national wealth. The average produce of wheat, for instance, is stated at 26 bushels per acre: if, by a better selection of seed, we could raise this amount to 27 bushels only, a supposition by no means unlikely, we should by this apparently small improvement have added to the nation's annual income 475,000 quarters of wheat, worth, at 50s., about 1,200,000l. yearly, which would be equal to a capital of 24 millions sterling gained for ever to the country by this trifling increase in the growth of one article alone, and that in England and Wales only. But it is not merely with regard to the total of any branch of produce that numbers afford a striking result. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.