388 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
might satisfy their propendency to go to the ocean, by furnishing 
them deep water and food that would be a substitute for that 
which they get in the ocean. This change, I think, would be no 
more violent than some that have been made wittusuccess. These 
experiments would cost but a trifle, and if successful would prove 
of inestimable value. Individuals are engaged in trout culture 
in different parts of the state with success, certainly equal to the 
amount of knowledge and capital they bring to bear upon it, but 
owing to the high esteem in which the trout are held by good 
livers, they will probably not be within the reach of the masses 
of the people for many years ; but our public waters can be so 
stocked as to furnish in a few years all our citizens with good 
fish and at a trifling expeuse. 
WHEAT CULTUBE. 
Read before the State Agricultural Convention in February, 1873. 
BY N. E. ALLEN, FOX LAKE. 
Wheat is the great staple in our state, and must continue to be, 
from our location, climatically considered, and also because prop¬ 
erly cultivated, there is more profit than any other general crop we 
can raise. 
The course commonly pursued is an outrage upon agri-* 
cultural economy. Lands that when first broken raised from 
twenty to thirty bushels per acre, now do not raise more than ten 
to fifteen. If a proper estimate was made of the entire state for 
the past year, or indeed for the past five years, it would be found 
that the average crop would not exceed eleven bushels per acre, 
if, indeed, it would equal that amount, and that, too, of an inferior 
quality. The cause must be apparent to any observing mind. 
Constant cropping without change—wheat, wheat, wheat, in many 
instances, for twenty or twenty-five years in succession, until the 
wheat-producing elements in the soil are all exhausted, and still the 
