The Address of Mr. Jay, entitled "A Statistical View of American Agriculture, its Home Resources and Foreign Markets," delivered at New York, before the American Geographical and Statistical Society, and published by D. Appleton & Co., in a very handsome pamphlet, is full of topics for thought. Well has it been said that "the statesman who pretends to govern, without knowing the important facts which interest society, makes a more fruitless attempt than the philosopher who should propose to make a general classification of the beings which compose the three kingdoms of nature, without knowing the essential characteristics of them".

We should all rejoice that a statistical society has now turned its attention to agricultural topics, for it cannot fail to act as a good teacher where all before was guess-work.

From these pages we take pleasure in making the following extracts:

"Looking beyond the number of individuals employed in American agriculture, to the amount of capital invested in it, you have been already told that the Superintendent of the census estimated the value of the capital, represented by agriculture in 1850, at five billions of dollars, and that represented by all other branches of industry at less than one billion, giving to agriculture more than five-sixths of the whole; and, although these figures may be but an approximation to the truth, the proportions are probably correct.

"Notwithstanding the enormous wealth of the metropolis, the agricultural interest pays four-fifths of the taxes.

"Prof. J. F. W. Johnston, in his Lectures on Agricultural Chemistry, says, that nine-tenths of the fixed capital of all civilized nations is embarked in agriculture.

"No man in England is so high as to be independent of this great interest, no man so Tow as not to be affected by its prosperity or its decline. The same is true, eminently, emphatically true, with us. Agriculture feeds, to a great extent it clothes us; without it, we should not have manufactures, we should not have commerce. They all stand together like pillars in a cluster, the largest in the centre; and that largest is Agriculture.

"To the existence and power of the French Government, as one of their own writers has remarked, the mildew on an ear of corn, or the oidium on a bunch of grapes, is of more vital consequence than the splendor of the imperial jewels, or the marvels of a thousand handicrafts. Whatever in our day cuts off the small profits of the industrial classes in Europe, or threatens multitudes with starvation, strikes at the stability of the political institutions of the land, and wields a mighty influence whether for evil or for good.

"The very existence of thrones may be affected - indeed some think their existence has been determined, - by causes apparently insignificant as the rot in the potato, or the weevil in a grain of wheat.

"The number of square miles contained in the area of the United States of America, in the present year, is within a fraction of three millions (2.936.165), somewhat more than one-third the area of North America, exclusive of the West Indies, and nearly double the area of all Europe, excepting Russia.

"When the increase of our native and foreign population shall invest with the density of New England the whole territory of the United States, its population will amount to one hundred and twenty-three millions. With the density of the Middle States, of fifty-eight (57.79) to the square mile, it would amount to one hundred and seventy millions.

"The density of Spain (78.03) would make it two hundred millions. That of France (172.74) five hundred millions. That of Great Britain (332.00) six hundred and sixty millions, while the density of Belgium (388.60), were it possible to support such a population on this continent, would give us eleven hundred and fifty millions. Such a population, however, or anything approaching to it, is a thing impossible in the United States, for the reason that a large portion of its territory is a barren waste, incapable of tillage. Such is the character of the space between the 98th meridian and the Rocky Mountains, denominated "The Great American Plain," and the space from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, with the exception of the rich but narrow belt along the ocean, may also be regarded, in comparison with other portions of the United States, as a wilderness unfitted for the use of the husbandman. (to be continued).