Cheyenne transporter. [volume] (Darlington, Indian Terr.) 1879-1886, 1882-01-25
The western Homcstead.

man. When properly ground and pre-
pared, it will sustain all the functions
OF an active life in health and viror
better than any other single article of
diet-meat, grain or vegetable. Bone.
muscle, fat, brain and fuel are stored
away in the cells of this little seed in
Just and beautiful proportion. 1t is a
noble grain, and as its fine qualities
become better known the demand be-
comes wider and more pressing. There
is no probability that this demand will
decrease, and the worlds market can
never be permanently glutted with it.
1t can be stored for any length of time,
and pecuniary necessity alone will
force it on the market.
1t is not strange, then, that with
such universal and steady demand
its culture should extend as rapidly as
the conditions of soil and climate will
permit. America is now the great
wheat-producing country of the world
every acre is being pressed into the
service OF this king among cereals.
But looking on the other side of the
picture, what do we see? Instead of
becoming better and more profitable
crop, as we ought to expect, with all
the knowledge that science and expe-
rience can bring to bear upon it, we
find regular and constant decline,
until after few years its culture will
be abandoned. 1t moves westward
like an invading army, exhausting the
fertility of the soil in its progress, and
demanding fresh1ields for its Unsuitable
greed. To many farmer the convic-
ton has come too late that the entire
profit realized from successive crops of
wheat has been swallowed up in the
depreciation of valuable land. We
can remember when the Genesee
Valley was the paradise Of wheat
growers, where so bushels to the acre
was not an uncommon crop. Twenty
years reduced the average to ten, which
would not pay expenses. The same re-
suit has followed as new and rich
lands of the West have been opened to
cultivation, until now the cry comes
back from even California that wheat
is no longer profitable, the product
having declined to less than eight BUSH
els per acre.
The cause of this fearful waste is
less difficult to find than the remedy.
Being a high-bred and aristocratic
grain, rich in all the more nutritive ell
ements, we should naturally expect it
to abstract from the soil the most
precious and valuable portions. Then,
TOO, it is not a gross feeder, like corn
or potatoes, but its food must be pre-
pared in a manner TO suit its most del
icate appetite, or it refuses to return
profit. Chemistry tells us that wheat
draws from the soil its phosphates,
potash and nitrogen, which are not
over abundant in most soils, and must
soon be supplied from some source or
the crop fails.
Wheat is rich in albuminoids, or
muscle-forming clements which ex-
plains its high value as food. But
these compounds of nitrogen are the
most costly and difficult to obtain in
quantity to restore to the exhausted
soil. Refuse fish, guanO, bone-meal,
ETC., are used by eastern farmers to
brace up their debilitated acres; but it
is idle to think of doctoring the broad
farms of the West with such homG-
opathic pills.
1t is singular fact that the vast
ocean of air which surrounds the earth
contains more than rs per cent of this
very element, nitrogen, which is so
scarce and costly an ingredient of
food, while the most abundant and
easily grown products--s starch, gum,
sugar, fat, &c, contain not trace of
nitrogen, but find their source of sup
nlu in q minnta n0rti0n of carhOnic