ground for wheat, it is said, should be plowed late in the spring, before it has become too dry; and plowed deep. In September, or when the first light rains come to soften the earth, it should be cross-plowed and sowed. During summer the ground is too dry, and during winter too wet, for the plow. "Wheat properly put in, on good ground, and having a whole summer of sunshine, without storm, to ripen in, and a harvest without rain, has every chance of turning out forty bushels to the acre; and this is probably not too much to expect of Marion County throughout. The farm of Hon. Sam. Brown, adjoining the new railroad town of Gervais, is the crack farm of the east side. It contains one thousand acres under fence, and has under cultivation several hundred acres. A fine substantial farm-house, with all the necessary out-buildings in good repair, give the place an air of age and wealth which few Oregon farms possess.
Marion may also be considered a type of the Wallamet Valley in its other natural resources—of timber, water-power, and minerals; and, like the agricultural resources, they are scarcely yet touched upon by the hand of improvement. All the varieties of lumber-making trees and timber for cabinet and other purposes, which have been named elsewhere, are native to the mountains, the plains, or the river-bottoms of this county.
Of towns or post-offices outside of Salem, the county has twelve. One of the most thrifty of these is Aurora, on the line of the Oregon and California Railroad. Aurora is settled by a colony of Dutch, who own sixteen thousand acres of land, which they cultivate on Fourier principles; and suffer themselves to be ruled over by an autocrat, named Dr. Lyle, who
