exposed to air in the bin, but put upon some safe scaffold let it remain unthreshed until seeding time arrives. Then let the threshing be done by horses.

In judging of seed the dimpled end should be distinctly marked, and the point from which the roots protrude must be somewhat prominent as if it was swollen.

THE PRODUCTIONS OF IOWA FOR 1860.

We commend the following letter, says the New York Tribune, to the particular attention of farmers and all dealers in farm produce. The writer is a gentleman of intelligence, whose position gives him rare opportunities of obtaining information :

SIR: I have just returned from an agricultural trip through the northeastern counties of this State, which enables me to give a pretty accurate estimate of the yield of wheat and corn in that section of Iowa. From a partial examination and inquiry in regard to the yield in the middle, southern, and western portions, I think I am enabled to form a pretty correct estimate of the average yield there, also. Owing to more frequent and copious showers, as well as the better adaptation of the soil for wheat, the average yield in the northeast is fully equal to twenty bushels to the acre. But in the middle, western, and southern counties, it is not over from 12 to 15 bushels per acre. Much of the wheat, all over the State, was sown in March, and generally not later than the first week in April. It was sown on a very dry soil, little or no rain or snow having fallen during the previous eight months, and it was not until a month at least, on the average, after the grain had been put in, that sufficient rain fell to moisten the earth. Much of the wheat was above the surface at that time, and at least half had germinated after the first rain. Hence it was very irregular, and it was feared for some time that not more than half a crop would be gathered. Some fields all over the State have been seriously affected by rust and the chinch bug, but not so much as to prevent a yield of 16 bushels per acre as the average of the State. This is double the yield of last year, and nearly four times that of the year before. The quality of the berry is at least 25 per cent better than it has been for years.

I subjoin the breadth of land occupied by wheat for four years with the gross production of each of those years, the first two from official returns, the last two upon estimates based upon as good authority as can be obtained. I esteem the estimate below rather than above a fair computation, at least I am satisfied that it is not extravagant. Twenty-five per cent only on the two previous years, has been added for the breadth of land occupied by wheat in 1859 and 1860

From present appearances the average yield of corn for 1860 will exceed that of any year since the settlement of the State. Unless we have an early September frost, as was the case last year, the northern half of our State will exhibit as good, if not a larger yield, than the middle and southern counties. From the best information I can obtain, in addition to my own extensive examination of fields, I am safe in placing the probable average yield at 45 bushels per acre. In many sections of the State it will be from 60 to 70 bushels, while there are numerous fields which will not turn out less than 100 bushels per acre. I subjoin the production of corn for four years past, but I have only placed the increased breadth of land for 1859 and 1860 at one-fourth that of wheat :

In order to make an estimate of the probable resources of our State for the year 1860, I subjoin the following from our State census returns :

The severity of the winter of 1857 caused a serious loss of cattle and hogs, but the increase has been such since as to be a matter of especial remark, from the number sent to the New York market. It would not be out of the way, therefore, to claim an income for the year 1860, from cattle and hogs, even after deducting a fair amount for home consumption, of at least $7,000,000. We shall then have, for this year :—

For wheat, after deducting one-third for home consumption, etc., if sold at only 60c. per bushel,

For cattle and hogs..

Making a total, in these two items alone, of.....

$7,200,000

7,000,000

$14,200,000

This sum will go a great way toward liquidating our debts at home and abroad; but if our farmers had expended their means more judiciously, and devoted their energies to the production of more profitable products than wheat, such as cattle, hogs, and sheep, and added cheese, butter, etc., we should have an exhibit of at least one-third more.

I send you the above, that there may be no miscalculation in regard to the actual or probable agricultural products of our noble State of Iowa, of the items mentioned for the year 1860. To place them too high would be unjust to the producers, and to place them too low would discredit the State. I have submitted it to several gentleman having extensive means of information, who assent to its general accuracy.

OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF IOWA FARMERS' COLLEGE,
Des Moines, Iowa, Aug. 1, 1860.

WM. DUANE WILSON.

STATISTICS OF POPULATION, &c.

POPULATION OF CHINA.

A correspondent of the Boston Traveller, who dates from the frigate Powhattan, May 20, 1860, remarks as follows:

The population of China has been carried to so high a figure by the Chinese officials in other years, that Europeans have been disposed to consider the whole as nearly fabulous, the Chinese being supposed to aim in this, as in other matters, to secure their own glorification, and create awe and wonder among the "outer barbarians." Thus, in 1780, the census gave a population of 277,548,431, and that of 1812 was 361,693,179, which seemed incredible to the rest of the world, divided into so many petty kingdoms and States. Since the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Russian mission, or college rather, established in Pekin under the authority of the Chinese Government, has been usefully occupied in various departments of science and general knowledge. A work of the members of this college has recently been translated from the Russian into German, bearing the title,Researches of the Imperial Mission at Pekin," in which, among other matters, tables are given of the population of China, one of which is according to the census of 1842, which had never been made public.

The article in the "Researches" from which the tables are taken, was written by M. SACHAROFF, a member of the college, who obtained the returns of the census for the year 1842 from the Board of Revenue in Pekin, no census of a later date having been taken. It is a long period back, therefore-no less than eighteen years and the natural increase of the population, even at a low ratio, must add very considerably to the figures and sum total given. Intelligent gentlemen and scholars, long resident in China, say they see no reason to doubt their substantial accuracy. Besides, comparing the census of 1780 and that of 1812 with that in 1842, obviously there is nothing impossible nor impracticable in the returns of the last.

China proper is divided into eighteen provinces, omitting Manchuria, Thibet, and Mongolia, of which the census of Manchuria only is given in the tables, this division of the empire being the native country of the reigning dynasty, and therefore better known and more entitled to honorable notice than the other subdued portions of the empire. Were these to be added, the total population of the empire would be very considerably increased. The entire population of England or the United States is less than that of a single Chinese province :

The census of 1780 gave a population of 277,548,431, and the census of 1812 a population of 361,693,179. The ratio of increase from 1812 to 1842, a period of thirty years, would give an increase of 36,454,000 in 1860, which, added to the population reported in 1842, would make the present population of China proper, including Manchuria, 451.137,000. This may seem incredible and purely fabulous to one who has seen only the sparse population in our own country, where neighbors are miles apart. But no figures can stagger the faith of a

careful observer, who wanders through the towns and villages which fill the country in China, wherever he goes, or who has made his way through the almost consolidated masses which block the streets of the great cities, and also, in addition, takes into account the hundreds of thousands who are born, live, and die in their boats and junks in the canals and rivers, and along the coasts, for there are towns and villages on the water as well as on the land.

M. SACHAROFF, as before stated, obtained the returns of the census for 1842 at the office of the Board of Revenue in Pekin. He points out several circumstances which threw more or less doubt on the entire reliableness of the census, one of which is the extraordinary disproportion between the number of families and the individuals reported, the number of families being to the number of individuals nearly as one to two, just as though the parents only were reckoned in the returns, while the children and servants were omitted. This anomaly does not appear in the carefully prepared returns of the military population, which were kept in the War-office, and which were also accessible to M. SACHAROFF, and examined by him. Here he found the proportion of families to individuals to be as 1 to 4; nor can any reason be readily assigned why the proportion should not hold the same among other classes, i. e., every family at an average consisting of four members, which is less than in Europe and the United States, where the average is between five and six. However the anomaly may be accounted for, whether from carelessness of the officials or any other unknown cause, there appears to be no grounds for doubting the general correctness of the returns, whether regard be had to the reported number of families, or to a moderate ratio of natural increase. At the ratio of increase of the population of the United States from 1810 to 1840, periods closely corresponding with those when the Chinese census was taken in 1812 and 1842, the increase within these two dates would be 515,714,000 instead of 53,000,000, the difference in the returns in the census tables, a gain of more than the entire population of the empire in 1860, by more than 100,000,000, and making the population of the empire in 1842 876,000,000, and at the present time 912.000,000, and adding the natural increase since the last census in 1842, and estimable at 36,000,000, at the ratio of increase given in the Chinese tables, and not according to our

own.

The ratio of increase in China and all the East is greatly below that in our own country. Still at a very low ratio, if we may place any reliance upon the Chinese census, it will be seen that there may be more truth than fable and selfglorification in the reported population of the empire. I have not attempted precision in my last figures, omitting thousands and tens of thousands, where a million and twenty millions are nothing.

INCREASED WEAR AND TEAR OF THE BRAIN IN MODERN LIFE.

In the report of the Commissioners on Lunacy for the year 1847, says the London Quarterly Review, we find the total number of private patients of the middle and upper classes, then under confinement in private asylums, amounted to 4,649. Now, if we skip eight years, and refer to the report of 1855, we find that there were only 4,557 patients under confinement, or about 96 less, notwithstanding the increase of population during that period. If we compare the number of pauper lunatics under confinement at these two periods, we shall find a widely different state of things; for in 1847, there were 9,654 in our public and private asylums, whilst in 1855 they numbered 15,822. In other words, our pauper lunatics would appear to have increased 6,170 in eight years, or upwards of 64 per cent. It is this extraordinary increase of pauper lunatics in the county asylums which has frightened some psychologists from their propriety, and led them to believe that insanity is running a winning race with the healthy intellect. But these figures, if they mean anything, prove that it is not the intellect of the country that breeds insanity, but its ignorance, as it cannot for one moment be contended that the great movements now taking place in the world originate with the laboring classes. We shall be told, we know, that there is a constant descent of patients from private asylums to public asylums;

that the professional man and the tradesman, after expending the means of his friends and family for a year or two in the vain hope of a speedy cure, becomes necessarily in the end a pauper lunatic, and that this stream aids to swell the numbers in the county institution. Allowing its due weight to this explanation -and those who know public asylums are well aware how small, comparatively speaking, is the educated element-yet, as the same disturbing element in the calculation obtained at both periods, we may safely conclude that both the figures are not thereby essentially altered.

A still more convincing proof that mental ruin springs rather from mental torpidity than from mental stimulation, is to be found by comparing the proportion of lunatics to the population in the rural and the manufacturing districts. Sir ANDREW HALLIDAY, who worked out this interesting problem in 1828, selected, as his twelve non agricultural counties, Cornwall, Cheshire, Derby, Durham, Gloucester, Lancaster, Northumberland, Stafford, Somerset, York, (West Riding.) and Warwick, which contained a population at that time of 4,493,194, and a total number of 3,910 insane persons, or 1 to every 1,200. His twelve agricultural counties were Bedford, Berkshire, Bucks, Cambridge. Hereford, Lincoln, Norfolk, Northampton, Oxford, Rutland, Suffolk, and Wilts, the total population of which was 2,012,979, and the total number of insane persons 2,526, a proportion of 1 lunatic to every 820 sane.. Another significant fact elicited was, that whilst in the manufacturing counties the idiots were considerably less than the lunatics; in the rural counties the idiots were to the lunatics as 7 to 5! Thus the HODGES of England, who know nothing of the march of intellect, contribute far more inmates to the public lunatic asylums than the toil-worn artisans of Manchester or Liverpool, who live in the great eye of the world, and keep step with the march of civilization, even if they do but bring up its rear. Isolation is a greater cause of mental ruin than aggregation-our English fields can afford cretins as plentifully as the upland valleys of the mountain range seldom visited by the foot of the traveler; whilst, on the other hand, in the workshop and the public assembly," As iron weareth iron, so man sharpeneth the face of his friend."

POPULATION OF ALEXANDRIA,

Under the official returns, as reported to the Department, the population of the city aggregates 11,206, and that of the county 1,367-making a total of 12,573. The following is the aggregate of each class of the population as returned by the census of 1850, and 1860:

The following table shows the progressive increase of population in city and county since 1800:

....

1810. 1820. 1830. 1840. 1850. 1860. 7,227 8,218 8,263 8,459 8,795 11,206 9,703 9,608 9,967 10,016 12,573

It will be seen by the first table that, while the increase in the population of the city since the last census has been about thirty per cent on its previous population, the increase in the county has been only about twelve per cent. In the city the increase of the white population has been 2,512; while the free negroes have decreased 60, and the slaves 41. In the county the white population has increased 167, the free negroes 41, and the slaves 37-thus showing that while the white population of the city and county has rapidly increased, the number of negroes has diminished.