STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE, &c.

AGRICULTURE IN FRANCE.

A writer, describing the great agricultural exhibition in Paris, remarks that, in surveying the magnificent collection of products of the soil and of materials useful in agriculture, we meet continued exemplifications of the advantage of a sunny and yet temperate clime. There are 2,500,000 acres of gardens and orchards in France, and specimens of their delicious fruit crops are here exhibited. We import largely from France, apples, pears, and cherries, with medlars and quinces, and innumerable other fruits, many dried or preserved. In the south of France are peach orchards of a thousand or two of trees each; in the vicinity of Toulouse thousands of peach trees are cultivated in the open ground, the summer temperature being so high that wall fruit would be roasted as it hung. Olive plantations abound, the most luxuriant being between Aix and Nice, there being a total of more than 300,000 acres of this evergreen shrub, of which the fruit is plucked green, or, when ripe, crushed for oil. There are a million and a quarter acres of chestnut plantations, producing food for the peasantry. The production of silk is no small branch of rural industry; the mulberry trees are planted in rows along roads, in corners, and around fields, the trees being treated as pollards, and the leaves cut or stripped off for feeding the silkworms early in the summer-a hundred weight of leaves producing six or ten pounds of raw silk. More than 100,000 acres of land support mulberries for silk, yielding between 20,000,000 to 30,000,000 pounds of cocoons. Hemp, flax, and hops are very largely cultivated in France. The growth of the beet root for sugar is very extensive, and it appears to be an unavailable crop in England, owing to the unsuitability of our climate for developing the full saccharine properties of the plant. There are in France upwards of 300 beet root sugar factories, producing more than 40,000 tons annually, while the non-crystalized matter extracted from lees and dregs furnishes enormous quantities of sweetening matter to breweries, and also to the wine doctors of Cette and the Gironde. The manufacture inaugurated by NAPOLEON has, indeed, become an important national industry. Even in 1827 there were but 89 factories. Near Lille and Valenciennes, and some other localities, the yield of sugar is about 16 to 25 tons per

acre.

Tobacco in Alsace and in Picardy, where the climate is similar to ours, is a very profitable crop, although a monopoly of the government, and under very stringent regulations as to culture. About 20,000 acres are grown in France, often returning £50 per acre, though the quality of produce is inferior to that of tobacco grown by private cultivators abroad. The management demands much labor and skillful treatment, being more like gardening than farming; still, there is nothing to prevent the crop answering extremely well in England.

Of course the wines of France figure in its Palace of Industry, there being samples from the vinyards of Champagne and Burgundy, and from those of far greater extent in Languedoc, Provence, and the celebrated vinyards of the Garonne. The 5,000,000 acres of vinyards yield a produce worth £30,000,000 sterling, a tenth or twelfth of which is exported. There is, perhaps, little fear

of French wires affecting the ruin of Burton-upon-Trent and the disuse of malting and barley-growing; still we hope to benefit by these brisk, enlivening beverages, and by the enlarged demand thus created to promote the welfare of large classes of the French population engaged in their production.

The number of cattle annually slaughtered in France is reckoned at 4,000,000, averaging about sixteen imperial stone each carcass, or much less than half the average weight of English, and the proportion of cattle per acre is far below ours. The total production of beef from such an extensive country is compara. tively small indeed. In fact, 2,000,000 oxen are engaged in labor, so that a large portion of the animals butchered consist of old beasts and of calves.

FLAX COTTON.

The Davenport Gazette announces that the subject of raising flax in Iowa, for the manufacture of cheap clothing fabrics, is going to have the attention of the farmers of that State-that Col. WILLIAM DUANE WILSON, Secretary of the Farmers' College, is about setting out on a lecturing tour, and will take with him specimens of calicoes and jeans manufactured from flax cotton. The Gazette says:

These goods are finished with a brighter color than those printed upon pure cotton cloth, besides promising greater durability, on account of the superior toughness of the fiber of flax. Satinets are also manufactured with flax filling, the warp being cotton. Also yarns half cotton and half flax-and three-quarters wool and one-quarter flax-said to be finer, softer, and more durable than though of all wool. These yarns and satinets we have not seen. We intend to wear the first pair of flax stockings we meet with, and then to speak from experience. But one thing is demonstrated. All sorts of common cloths and clothing can be made from flax which are now made from cotton. The goods also are as cheap as cotton goods and handsomer; and the raw material can be raised in any Northern State.

When the Chevalier CLAUSSEN, in 1851, announced to the world that flax could be manufactured into a cotton--not distinguishable by old cotton growers from the cotton of the South--and spun and wove upon ordinary cotton machinery --the world was incredulous. But it is of no use to doubt when one has seen the goods.

For a hundred years experiments have been going on in the cottonizing of flax. It was not, however, till the spring of 1857 that the first bale of tow was prepared by the new process at Niagara Falls, New York, by Mr. ALLEN. In the summer of 1858 the flax cotton was first used in manufacturing with cotton and wool, at East Greenwich, Rhode Island. In the spring of 1859 the machinery was perfected at Watertown, Massachusetts, near Boston. Other mills in different parts of New England are now adopting this machinery, and it is to be introduced into the West, as soon as it can be constructed. As soon as the farmers of the West are awake to this great work of raising their own clothing by the cultivation of flax, the machinery for turning it into cotton will be at their doors. After that process is gone through with--as we have said before --the machinery of an ordinary cotton mill will turn it into cloth.

The difficulties in reducing flax to cotton-which it has taken a century of experimenting to overcome--grow out of the difference between the fiber of native cotton and that of native flax. The one is flat like a ribbon, the other is tubular; the one is the covering of a seed, the other of a stalk; the one coils up on being torn from its position, the other grows upon its stalk in layers overlapping one another, giving the appearance of one continuous thread. These layers are stuck together by a compound (glumen) which requires both a mechanical and chemical process to remove it, and renders the fiber stiff and inflexible. The old process for removing this glumen was in 36 parts, occupying

six weeks' time, besides the rotting, &c., and cost more than the whole process of cottonizing under the new plan. The manufacture of cotton has increased immensely in the United States from the difficulty in subduing flax-a difficulty now happily surmounted. Henceforth flax will be grown and manufactured on as large a scale as cotton has been. The present demand for cotton is from 25,000.000 to 30 000,000 bales, while our actual supply is but 6,000,000. The flax of Iowa and other Northern States will, in a few years, we are confident, make up this great deficit and immensely promote human comfort, health, and happiness.

Flax requires only an equable temperature, exempt from severe drought on the one hand, and excessive moisture on the other-and for soil, a dry, deep loam, with a clay sub soil. New grounds produce a strong crop. The land should be well drained, though it will bear a good deal of moisture. Says a writer :"Plough in the autumn, immediately after harvest, across the ridges-leave the land in this state till early spring; then plough again, harrow, and sow. Sow two bushels of seed to the acre. After sowing, cover with a seed-harrow, going twice over it-once up and down, and once crosswise. Finish with the roller. The earlier the seed is sown, the more slow and steady the growth, and the finer, in consequence, the fiber."

AGRICULTURE IN GEORGIA-INCREASE IN THE USE OF FERTILIZERS.

Last year the Central Railroad transported four millions of pounds of the various kinds of fertilizers over its line for the twelve months ending on the 30th November. The quantity transported over the Central Railroad from December 1st, 1859, to June 1st, 1860, was in round numbers fifteen-and-a-half million of pounds! This company has contributed very largely to the extensive application of these agents by a low rate of freight, the charges for transportation barely covering the cost. The profit to it, however, is secured as the increased amount of cotton raised gives them an increased quantity of a more profitable article to transport. So that while the low rate of freight is liberal to the producer it is also profitable to the company.

The inferences to be drawn from this change in the system of agriculture, indicate a disposition on the part of planters to discard the prejudices which have heretofore commonly existed against the aid of science in promoting agriculture. It is becoming apparent that it is cheaper and easier to renew old lands than to emigrate to new and unsettled countries, breaking ties of friendship and relationship, and exposing wife, children, and negroes to strange diseases. The result will be to stop the tide which has been flowing westward, and people and cultivate the red hills which have so long been left to waste.

The following is a comparison between the quantity of fertilizers transported by the Central Railroad during six months of this year, and the twelve months of last year, in the following table; the six months beginning with 1st December, 1859, and ending 1st June, 1860, the twelve months being the year immediately preceding :

Six

Twelve

15,353,620

8,854,850

STATISTICS OF POPULATION, &c.

POPULATION OF GEORGIA IN 1859.

The following is a table containing the abstract of the census returns of one hundred and thirty counties in the State for 1859, (two counties having failed to make returns,) by which it will be seen that the total population in these counties is 1,014,418, viz., 571,534 whites, 439,592 slaves, and 3,292 free persons of color. The same counties in 1852 gave 919,076 as a total population, showing an increase since 1852 of 80,256. The increase of slaves has been 45,487, and of whites 31,477. If the remaining two counties increase in like ratio, the whole population of the State, by the census returns, will be about 1,024,000. There are returned 299 deaf and dumb, 400 insane, and 442 idiots. There are also returned 81,719 males between the ages of 6 and 16, 73,480 females between 6 and 15; 62,109 males and 59,895 females under 6 years of age; 131,592 males over 16 years of age, and 138,323 females over 15 years of age: