I am surprised to see in Mr. Willits' article the statement on p. 318, June American Garden, as to the want of knowledge in 1856 of our western interior, its climate and capacities, and particularly his remarks as to wheat growing in the northwest. I had the honor to be called on by Judge Mason, then the Commissioner of Patents, to prepare an extended paper on climatology for the agricultural report of 1853, which occupies pages 327 to 433 of that volume. In that report, p. 338, etc., treating of wheat climates, I claim all the northwestern plains as favorable, and quote Sir John Richardson at length (p. 391) that wheat at Lake Winnipeg is equal to any grown in the United States. In several portions of my report full claim is made to the capacity of the interior and northwestern areas of the United States and British America. Again in 1854-5 I prepared a quarto volume at the War Department giving the first isothermal and rain charts for the continent.

Still more fully in my climatology of the United States, 1857, I asserted the productive capacity of the interior climate, and in the concluding chapter, p. 529 to 534, I assert that on an area of 500,000 square miles of plains and their woodland borders, all the grains of the cool temperate latitudes can be produced abundantly. I sustain Lord Falkirk's claim that the northwestern area will support 30 millions of people. The fullest claim now made does not exceed my claims made first in 1853, and in 1854-5, and again in 1857. And in these works, each a large volume, I published the most complete records of climatological observation yet published in this or any other country. - Lorin Blodget, Philadelphia.