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MAUMEE VALLEY.

This valley comprises the following counties, viz: Allen, Auglaize, Crawford, Defiance, Fulton, Hancock, Henry, Lucas, Mercer, Ottawa, Paulding, Putnam, Sandusky, Seneca, Van Wert, Williams, Wood, Wyandot. It encloses that portion of the State known as the "Black Swamp," and for many years was not considered a very desirable portion of the State in which to locate. But since the several railways have been completed through this region, it is manifesting indubitable evidence of some day rivaling, at least, if not surpassing, the Miami Valley in fertility. The following statement shows the agronomic condition of this valley :

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The population of the valley is as strictly rural as that of the Muskingum, there being one city only (Toledo) containing more than ten thousand inhabitants, and there is only one other in the entire valley which contains 5,000 or over. It is twice as well supplied with railroad facilities as the Scioto, and fully as well as the Muskingum, besides having the advantage of a lake port. By comparing table No. 11 with similar tables of the other valleys, it will be found that the valley is either not adapted to the growth of corn, or else the corn in this region suffered more severely from the August frost than in other portions of the State, for there is no other valley or region in which the average is as low as eighteen bushels per acre, and the lowest average product per acre of tobacco is also found in this valley.

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The following table shows that, considering the amount of land cleared, the number of inhabitants, and the comparatively recent settlement of this valley, great attention is being given to live stock. In 1830 the population of this valley amounted to 17,493 only; in 1840 it had increased 100,559, or more than five hundred per cent., and the increase from 1840 to 1860 is nearly three hundred per cent. No region of country having a normal or full average population for its fertility and commercial facilities, could under any known precedent increase so rapidly, and the inference is very manifest that the population is not yet very dense, nor are the agricultural resources fully developed.

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The Maumee Valley farmer having one hundred acres of land to put into crops in 1863, apportioned it as follows:

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These hundred acres produced for him of first eight specified crops 15.09 bushels per acre, and enabled him to keep eleven head of horses, twentyfive head of cattle, thirty-six head of sheep, and twenty-nine hogs. The average agronomic condition of every family consisting of five persons in this valley is as follows:

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Compared with the Scioto Valley, each family has about the same proportion of horses, sheep, acres of land in crops, and maple sugar; they have, however, more cattle, and consequently produce more butter than in the Scioto, but produce less bushels and have fewer swine, whilst the Scioto has twelve and one-third per cent. greater population.

WESTERN RESERVE.

This region embraces a greater variety of geological formations than any other in the State. The extreme east, bordering on Pennsylvania, is well supplied with bituminous coal in situ—the central portion is conglomerate formation, and the western partakes largely of drift, covering the upper silurian, or corniferous; whilst the northern portion is more lacustrine. But the agriculture is not so varied as the geological formations are. This district is composed of the following counties, viz: Ashtabula,

Cuyahoga, Erie, Geauga, Huron, Lake, Lorain, Medina, Mahoning, Portage, Summit and Trumbull The following is its agronomic condition:

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The railroad facilities of the Reserve are fully equal to those of the Miami Valley, and the Lake is of as much, if not more, importance to it than the Ohio river is to the Miami Valley.

It appears somewhat singular that both wheat and corn should succeed better on the Reserve than in the Miami or Scioto vallies-those which boast the greatest fertility of any portion of the State. The product per acre of wheat, corn, oats, flax seed, potatoes, tobacco, sorgho and clover hay, exceed those of the Miami Valley, and falls very little short on meadow hay. Why is this? Surely not on account of soil,-not on acaccount of climate. It has been suggested that the Reserve reports more correctly than other portions of the State; but if we accept this explanation as the proper one, it jeopardizes, to say the least, the veracity of the ather portions, and this we are not disposed to do. We are willing to believe that all have made equally correct returns to their respective aszessors. A better system of culture obtains on the Reserve than anywhere else in the State, and it is to this fact, in a greater degree than in anything ese, that the superior crops are found there. It is true that the va feties of corn grown in the Miami and Sciote vallies will not ripen on the Reserve, but this is the only exception. Potatoes do better there than in any of the vallies; so, too, with tobacco; and it is a singular fact that the only sample of cotton grown in Ohio and offered for competition for the

premium offered by the State Board, was grown in the open air on the Lake shore.

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An examination of the following table (No. 15) wll show that the Reserve has about as many horses for every 100 inhabitants as the Miami Valley, nearly twice as many cattle, nine times as many sheep, but about one-third only as many hogs. Corn, cattle and swine preponderate in the Scioto Valley, corn and swine in the Miami, and corn, cattle and sheep on the Reserve. Whilst the area of the Reserve is about one-eighth of the State, it produces nearly one-third of the butter, fifteenth-sixteenths of the cheese, almost two-fifths of the maple sugar, one-third of the flax fibre, nearly one-third of the entire hay crop of the State, more than onefourth of the potatoes, one-fifth of the oats. The apportionment of the acreage in crops is therefore different from that in the valleys.

TABLE NO. XV.-LIVE STOCK IN WESTERN RESERVE.

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