38 
WISCONSIJ^ &TATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
steers and Poland China or Berkshire pigs to market and pocket 
the proceeds, while the farmer often says, when tired from a hard 
day’s labor in the harvest field, and sees the former ride by in his 
carriage with his family, I wish I was a merchant, banker, or pur¬ 
suing some profession other than farming. In most of such cases, 
if they should change their business, each taking the other’s, both 
would become bankrupt, where before they had been reasonably 
thrifty and prosperous. Stick to the business you understand, and 
if from its being crowded your profits are small, remember if you 
step out of this, you will likely enter others equally full, and with 
the chances against you, from a want of knowledge of the business. 
Under just laws, wisely directed industry, with frugality in any de¬ 
partment of legitimate industry, will almost invariably be crowned 
with success. 
The liberal appropriations made by the state in 1876 and 1877, 
for the propagation and distribution of food fishes, have been wisely 
expended by the commissioners, and has placed this new fool pro¬ 
ducing industry of the state upon a substantial foundation. The 
waters of Wisconsin are so extensive and so pure, that when fully 
stocked with food fishes adapted to them, the amount of food which 
will be produced can hardly be estimated. This too, with little or 
no expense in cultivation, as compared to the production of soil 
crops. The water, once planted, needs but little attention until the 
harvest, when the product can be gathered, and which in nutriment 
will exceed the land, acre for acre. The water, w’^hen once well 
planted, needs no more seed for centuries; no tilling of the element 
required, and with a prospect of a more uniform crop than from the 
soil, as drawbacks in the shape of destructive agencies are small 
compared with the soil products. Commissioner Baird says in his 
recent report relative to the importance of this industry, that 
“China, with its enormous population, greater to the square mile 
than any other part of the world, derives the larger portion of its 
animal food from the interior waters of the empire, the methods of 
fish cultivation there being conducted in a very efficient manner, 
and every cubic yard of pond and stream thoroughly utilized.” 
The practicability of fish culture is now fully established, and few 
if any, of the states of the Union will derive greater advantages 
