By the census of 1850 more than half the corn was produced in the Southern States. That is to say, over 300,000,000 bushels were produced there, and the remainder mostly West. It is now the case that the Southern crop is mostly cut off by drouth, and that section will have to purchase largely. The crops there may not average more than half that of 1850, or 150,000,000 bushels. At the West, on the other hand, the production has been immense, from a much larger breadth of land and greater number of people, aided by the newly-invented machines. Under these circumstances the crops of that region are estimated at four times as much as that of 1850, or 1,200,000,000 bushels, which, with the Southern crop, will give 1,350,000,000 bushels of corn. The weight of the Western crop would be 38,400,000 tons. available for export it will give 120,000,000 bushels, weighing 3,840,000 If 10 per cent of it is tons of freight, and worth $96,000,000. Of the surplus crop there will be required, possibly, 60,000,000 bushels for Southern consumption, if the damage done to the crop is there anything like what is feared. That corn must descend the rivers by every mode of conveyance. There has been something like a panic at the South in relation to corn, and offers of responsible parties have been made to supply any quantity at 90 cents. Even if this should be the case, the surplus left for export will meet any reasonable demand. The production of wheat in the United States cannot be easily ascertained. The figures were given by the census of 1840 and by that of 1850, and estimates have been made from time to time since, but these are merely vague estimates, and do not appear to be entitled to much confidence. The only mode in which an approximation to the facts may be made, is to adopt the figures of the census, and by taking the known. quantities exported, allow for seed the usual quantity, and the remainder is the amount consumed. The following table is compiled on this data: Consumption of wheat at Actual ex- Price in 23.267,726 59,743,796 81,487,041 ports. 11,198,098 Seed. Crop. N. York. 8,827,017 8,482,727 11,500,000 84,827,272 $5 44 104,479,923 5 62 12,500,000 110,323,490 668 24,250,000 84,875,000 12,948,490 .......... 5 25 In this table of the crop of 1839, 11,198,098 bushels were exported, and nearly nine million bushels were used for seed in 1840, leaving a remainder which gave three-and-a-half bushels per head of the whole population for consumption. And as this took place at the normal price. of $5 44, it may be supposed the quantity about sufficed for the usual wants. The production of 1849, after the great spur given to production. by the prices of the famine years, gave about the same results-three-anda-half bushels per head, at $5 62 per barrel for flour. The production of 1850 was consumed in the year 1851, and following the increase of the population, which is that of the Treasury estimates, it did suffice to admit of the same rate of consumption, and allow of 12,948,490 bushels to be exported, with a rise of price to $6 68. In the following year the crop was so much larger that it allowed 18,600,680 bushels to be exported, after feeding the people, and their remained still a surplus which caused prices to fall $2 per barrel. The crop of 1853 was large, but the European demand set in when it was coming to market, and 28,148,595 bushels were exported early in the year. This was found to be far more than could be spared, since prices rose rapidly, and remained at over $9 through that and the succeeding year. The crop of 1854 was quite short. Notwithstanding the very high prices abroad only 7,821,548 bushels could be exported, and prices were maintained at $9 50. These high prices stimulated production, and the crop of 1856 sufficed to admit of the usual consumption, and allow 33,130,596 bushels to be exported, while the price fell to $6 50. Since that year the prices have continued at about $5 25, a rate which has not paid very well to cultivate. The subsidence of the speculations at the West since 1857 has greatly diminished the consumption of food. The number of travelers, speculators, emigrants, and road builders, has been greatly reduced, and caused far less local consumption; while the crop of 1859 has been abundant for the wants of the home consumers, and to allow of a steady export, without much change in prices. The exports from July 17th to September 1st have been, from New York to Great Britain and Ireland, as follows: These figures indicate that the supply has been sufficient. The stock at the West, with the new crop coming in, will afford abundant supplies to meet the export demand, which is likely to be steady and without speculative action, thus allowing the whole surplus to pass out of the country, as it did in the year 1853. It is obvious that it is not the interest of the grower, under such circumstances, to hold. The exports of 1853 are an example. The table given shows that, of the whole quantity exported up to April 1st from New York, 7,121,712 bushels and 1,808,951 barrels, more than two-thirds, went before December, at gradually rising prices. The result proved that more was sent out of the country than could have been well spared, and consequently that the whole home trade paid very high prices. The exports of wheat for the year ending June, 1854, were, it appears, 28,148,595 bushels from the whole country, out of a crop of 122,000,000. It resulted that the stocks were exhausted, and the price remained at over $9 for two years. By exporting the surplus at comparatively low figures, the farmers obtained very high prices from the whole home market. The sales of the wheat and corn this year are likely to remove a considerable surplus, since the mistake was committed in 1858 of refusing to sell unless the high figures of 1857 could be obtained, and as a consequence no doubt much old wheat accumulated. Art. II.-NEW YORK BAY-ENCROACHMENTS. THE advisory council of the Coast Survey has received from the Superintendent a map, prepared, under his direction, by A. Boschke, Esq., comparing the shore lines and hydrography of New York bay and harbor, and the approaches, as shown in the surveys of 1835-36 and of 1855-56 by officers of the Coast Survey. On this map they make report of great interest to the mercantile community. This comparative map has been prepared with great care and ability by Mr. Boschke, and shows in a conspicuous manner the changes which have taken place within the last twenty years in the harbor and its dependencies. Mr. Boschke calculated that, between the Hudson and East rivers alone, 1,220 acres of land have been made, upon which, formerly, the tide rose more than four-and-a-half feet, removing thus a tidal nearly nine millions of cubic yards from this part of the harbor. space of To this encroachment is to be added the space occupied by piers and slips, amounting to 519 acres, since the tidal currents are so checked between the piers as to lose nearly their whole scouring action. alone displace about 312,000 cubic yards. It is, of course, to be conThe piers sidered that these encroachments are made upon a port of great capacity, and that they represent but a small fraction of the total area of even this portion of the harbor. If made according to a systematic plan which would have considered all the circumstances of the problem, they would by no means have produced injurious consequences, but the contrary. They The importance of these changes to the welfare of New York, as a great emporium of commerce, needs no enforcement from us. should be watched carefully, be faithfully chronicled, and be attentively studied. It is not sufficient to know the changes and their extent. The causes which have produced them must be ascertained. In this they be regulated and controlled. Thus only can injurious changes be way alone can prevented, and favorable ones be assisted. It by no means follows that, because a partial change in a particular direction is favorable, that if this be continued indefinitely it will still be advantageous. For example: a diminution in the water-span of a harbor, by increasing the velocity of the current, may deepen the harbor, and thus a first encroachment may appear to be advantageous. Continue this, and the velocity of the current becomes excessive; navigation is impeded by it; the bed of the harbor is torn up in one place to be deposited in another; the capacity of the harbor is contracted injuriously. Again: the contraction of the entrance to the harbor may act, at first, favorably by increasing the rate of flow of water over the bar, and thus increasing its channels; but this contraction, if continued, may so alter the direction of the currents as to destroy the first favorable effect, and may even be carried so far as to obliterate, by its encroachments, some of the principal channels. It will be seen, in the course of our remarks, that an increase in the velocity of currents and changes in their direction have, in many cases, produced favorable results, and that even the advance of Sandy Hook into the main ship channel may, up to this time, have been advantage ous, while, if encroachments in the same direction were continued beyond certain limits, the destruction of the harbor might ensue. It will be further seen that the physical survey of the harbor and approaches, which we have heretofore recommended in strong terms to the commissioners, is absolutely essential to furnish materials for the study of the diverse and complicated phenomena which the harbor presents. We have the basis of this in the present topographical and hydrographic surveys of the Coast Survey; but we need very elaborate observations on the tides and currents, and on the movement of the sand and other materials constituting the bottom of the harbor, before we can satisfactorily trace the causes of all the effects which the comparative map brings to light. We have an example of what is desired in the satisfactory results obtained from the observations on the growth of Sandy Hook, and a case in which the minuteness of the facts enables us to draw very safe conclusions. We cannot too strongly or too often urge upon the commissioners the necessity for knowing whence the materials of the bar are derived, and how they are brought to their present places; why they are deposited as we find them, and why they change their places according to laws, which are obvious on a casual inspection of the comparative map, and are confirmed by a close study of its details. In following out the important changes which have taken place in the harbor, we have been greatly assisted by the able report of Mr. Boschke, before referred to, and refer to it as our test for most of the numerical results, for many of the facts, and for some of the deductions which we present. We begin with the changes at the entrance of New York Bay, and, first, with those of the land on the south side, namely, at Sandy Hook; second, with those on the north side, at Coney Island and the shore of Long Island to the eastward as far as Rockaway Beach; and next proceed to the changes of the bar itself, outer and inner, and the channels and shoals into which it is divided. Upon the depths of the channels of this bar depends the commercial prosperity of New York. CHANGES AT SANDY HOOK. The lighthouse, which is now more than a mile from the point of Sandy Hook, was built near to that point. Maps of nearly a century ago show it as about one-third of a mile from the end of the Hook. The point both advances and recedes, but, upon the whole, grows to the northward, jutting out more and more into the main ship channel. Its rate of growth, on the average, for the last century, has been about onesixteenth of a mile in twelve years. In the main ship channel, where, at the time of Captain Gedney's survey, there was 120 feet of water, there is now but 21 feet. Large areas, over which twenty years ago there was from 20 to 40 feet of water, are now dry ground. Within twenty years the point has grown to the northward 220 yards, narrowing the main ship channel, and changing in a degree the direction of both ebb and flood currents at this part of the entrance. Various causes were assigned for this growth; and minute observations of the tides and currents were made by the Coast Survey, under the immediate direction of the Superintendent, by Sub-Assistant Henry Mitchell, under authority of the commissioners, to test the different suppositions, and to collect such a body of facts as would lead undoubtedly to the full solution of the problem. The observations have shown that on both sides of Sandy Hook, the outer or ocean side, and the inner side of Sandy Hook Bay, there prevails during the ebb and flood tides northwardly currents, varying in strength at different times and at different distances from the shore, but tending to carry the sand on both the outer and inner shores to the northward. On the outside, in False Hook Channel, this current prevails for seven hours out of the twelve, being strongest in mid-channel, and the weakest on the shore of the Hook and on the False Hook Shoal. On the inside the northwardly current prevails for eleven hours out of the twelve. At the meeting of these currents their motion is lost, and the sand which they transported is deposited. The comparative chart by the form of the curves of 6 and 12 feet depth off the point of the Hook shows this in a very perspicuous manner. It is easy to see from the principles of the motion of fluids how these currents exist while the tidal currents are flowing in and out of the entrance to the bay. On the ebb the outside current is an eddy current, having nearly the opposite direction to the general tidal current issuing from the bay. Inside both ebb and flood draw the water from Sandy Hook Bay by the western shore of the Hook, which is thus worn away. The northwardly current outside has not only carried the materials of the New Jersey coast northward, but it has diminished very much the area of the shoals known as the False Hook and Outer Middle Ground; has deepened the bar at the southern end of False Hook Channel from 21 to 22 feet; has, according to Mr. Boschke, deepened the channel by about one foot and a half; and has removed the bulkhead, which, in 1836, closed the northern end of False Hook Channel, giving 30 feet of water where there was twenty years ago but 13 feet. Eighteen feet can now be safely carried through this channel at mean low water. The projecting shoals formed just north of what was in 1836 an inlet, about a mile north of the old Shrewsbury Inlet, have also considerably diminished. Shrewsbury Inlet, which, in 1835, was about 1,100 yards north of the Ocean House, and through which six feet could be carried at low water, and the wider but shoaler entrance just referred to above, are now entirely obliterated. Seeing in these northwardly currents the power which transports the sand to the point of the Hook, we have the obvious remedy afforded by jetties, at suitable intervals and of proper lengths and directions, for stopping the progress of the material. These constructions have of late years been so much studied by engineers that most of the circumstances attending them have been ascertained, and it will be easy, whenever the growth of Sandy Hook ought to be arrested, to do so by simple and comparatively inexpensive means. Mr. Boschke estimates that in twenty years a million and a half cubic yards of sand have been removed from this channel; that about a million cubic yards of sand have been transported from the Outer Middle and False Hook shoals, of which half a million have been re-deposited at the northern end, increasing it as is shown upon the comparative map. Thus two millions of cubic yards of sand have been transported towards the point of Sandy Hook, the main ship channel, and the southern part |