502 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 
and the main canals for navigation are always constructed with a view 
to a comprehensive plan of irrigating the country. Switzerland 
also is full of devices for catching the water on the hill-sides and spread- 
ing it on the green slopes; it is then again arrested on its way to the 
valley, and turned over the meadows and fields of maize; every little 
stream of water is thus utilized. In Bedford, England, the growth 
of Italian rye-grass by the town sewage is a most complete success; six 
crops were raised last year, realizing £20 per acre. The grass in these 
irrigated fields is perennial. As the cultivation of cereals and root- 
crops has been carried to a high degree of perfection by the best Eng- 
lish farmers, their next great step in improvement must be irrigation. 
Along their valleys water for irrigating scores of acres is to be obtained 
in abundance at a few feet below the surface, by a centrifugal or 
chain-pump, worked by a horse er an engine. In France irrigation 
has enabled farmers in some distri¢ts to keep double the number of 
cattle and sheep, as well as to raise one-third more corn. There the 
rivers and running water are not under the control of private individ- 
uals, as in England. The water belongs to the owner of the land only . 
through which it flows during its transit; when it passes his boundary 
he has no further control over it. As long ago as 1669 Louis XIV abol- 
ished the feudal rights of the proprietors in rivers, the ownership thereof 
being reserved by the state. 
. WISCONSIN. 
In the eighth volume of reports cf the Wisconsin State Agricultural 
Society (1869) are embodied the transactions of the State Horticultural 
Society and tabular abstracts of the reports of the county societies. It 
is the fourth volume that has been edited by Dr. Hoyt, and contains 
more articles of practical value and interest than any of its predecessors. 
His own report, as secretary, extending over one hundred pages, gives 
a comprehensive view of the character of the past season, and the prin- 
cipal crops of the State, as well as suggestions upon its mining interests, 
commercial development, public improvement, immigration, agrieul- 
tural education, &c. There are also several valuable articles by other 
writers. 
The farming interest suffered considerably from the general failure of 
hops and the low price of wool; besides,in consequence of the cold weather 
of March and April corn was late in being planted, affecting the crop; the 
abundance of rain through the summer was favorable to the potato 
crop, inducing a yield of 300 to 500 bushels per acre, and protecting it, 
in a great degree, from the ravages of the potato bug. The fruit crop 
was one of the finest ever raised in the State. The yield of wheat was 
enormous, the most careful estimates ranging it between 20,000,000 and 
25,000,000 bushels, at an estimated average of 13.3 bushels per acre. 
The Tappahannock and Arnautka wheats, introduced and distributed 
by the Department of Agriculture, gave good satisfaction, though the 
former is better adapted to a more southern latitude. The latter, from 
Russia, promises well, and under reasonably favorable circumstances gives 
a bountiful yield; it is a bearded wheat, with remarkably large heads, 
and avery large, handsome berry, and on new lands it is thought it will 
yield double if not treble the average of the ordinary sorts cultivated 
in the State. More attention is urged to those inexorable laws of na- 
ture that demand a reinforcement of the soil by the careful return to it 
of the necessary elements of which it has been deprived by suecessive 
years of reckless cultivation, by the burning of straw, and the laborious 
moving of barns to escape what was formerly considered the nuisance 
