34 
WlSCONSI^r STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
“ If the schools are overshadowed, if they are absorbed, if their 
funds are appropriated to other uses, if their students are made to 
occupy an inferior position, if they do not teach the subjects most 
useful to farmers, if they do not diffuse a taste of superior culture,, 
if they do not make farming more honorable and more profitable, 
if they do not aid the patrons in every way, it will be owing to the 
neglect of those who have claimed to be and who ought to be their 
best friends.” 
In one of our exchanges from the east, I recently read that sev¬ 
eral hundred farms in New England had been deserted the last 
year; that their owners could not obtain a living upon them, and 
lienee of course could not sell them. This condition of things is 
not surprising when we consider that these lands have gradually 
been robbed of soil elements of fertility for a hundred years or 
more, with but a small per cent, of these elements returned to the 
soil as compensation. The wonder is that this exhaustion has been 
so slow, and that these farms have supported their owners thus- 
long under their shiftless, exhaustive system, and with a soil not 
deep or rich in its natural condition. Let the farmers of Wisconsin 
and other western states heed the lessons these exhauted farms* 
and deserted homes of the older states teach. Do not flatter your¬ 
selves that because the soil of the west is deep, rich and fertile, that 
it cannot be exhausted. It is only a matter of a little more time 
than New England has taken to exhaust her soil of plant food, be¬ 
fore we shall be in a like condition, unless we keep up the fertility 
of our lands by returning each year fertilizers equivalent to that 
taken up by the crops grown. We all know better than we do. 
We know that we cannot produce cereals, pork, beef and other 
food, and send them to our cities and to foreign countries for con¬ 
sumption without taking plant food from the soil in large quantities, 
and unless we here apply some law of compensation, gradually the 
fertility will be removed until nonpaying crops will be the result. 
Nature does all she can for us by returning to the earth in rain, 
snow and dew, the ammonia and other plant food which escapes 
from water closets, yards and out buildings, but oftentimes not 
until after such gases have been taken into the lungs of the people, 
poisoning their systems and producing fevers and death. The 
