158 



of labor, witliout much regard to the quantity of land used, if it be so used as 

 not to exhaust its productive powers. On the otlier hand, where laud is scarce 

 and bears a high price, and labor is comparatively abundant and cheap, the de- 

 sideratum naturally is, to obtain the greatest amount of produce from a given 

 quantity of land, without much regard to the amount of labor bestowed upon it. 

 The former is our condition at present When our public domain all becomes 

 occupied, and as population begins to crowd upon the means of subsistence, it 

 ■will become our interest to apply more labor to the same surface. And as popu- 

 lation goes on increasing, the proportion of labor which may be applied to a 

 given surface will continue to increase, until the increased product will no longer 

 sustain the labor necessary to its production ; and here the utmost limit of popu- 

 lation will be arrived at. It is quite conceivable that labor may be spread over 

 too great a surface to secure the first desideratum — the greatest quantity of pro- 

 duce to a o-iven amount of labor, and the wisdom of our farmers will best be 

 iiianifested by observing a rational medium. 



AGRICULTURE OF DANE COUNTY. 



Bv T. T. WHITTLESEY, Pheasant Buaxch. 



Dane County contains over 1,000 square miles, most of it good arable land, 

 'and excellently well adapted to farming purposes — endowed with a fertile soil, 

 suitably apportioned between rolling prairie of moderate extent and woodland, 

 not heavily timbered nor hard to be subdued, yet furnishing a sufiicient supply 

 of fuel and materials for building — free from sterile tracts and mountainous 

 regions, with very little waste land or unreclaimable marsh — favored with nu- 

 merous lakes supplying fish of the finest flavor, with water-courses for mills and 

 manufactories, and copious springs of water — with low meadow yielding annually 

 abundance of good native grasses, and a soil adapted to the growth of all of the 

 ordinary agricultural products. Situated midway between the Lakes and the 

 Mississip])i, it has the advantage of the Eastern and Southern markets. Possessed 

 of a healthy climate, a productive soil and central position, nothing is wanted to 

 make this county rich and populous but to have her capacities properly under- 

 stood and rightly developed. 



Our soil contains varied proportions of the primitive earths — some parts have 

 an excess of clay and some of sand — but lime stone is found in gi-eat abundance 

 and can easily be supplied in a })ul\erized state to correct the deficiencies of a 

 superabundance of either. We have strong and light soils, dry and inuisl, with 

 a greater or less depth, all productive, but each requiring a difierent cultivation, 



