Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
67 
papers that have such a class of reading in them as we desire and 
as will promote our interests. 
Mr. J. M. Smith, of Green Bay, said: Mr. President, you spoke 
in your paper of short-horned cattle being superior for beef. I 
have no donbt of that; but did you intend to state them to be su¬ 
perior to the full blood, or that they can be so only as a stepping 
stone to the full blood? You spoke of them being superior, but 
did not say whether the full bloods are superior to the grades or 
not. 
President Stilson. I remarked that the way to improve the 
thorough-breds was the use of blooded stock on the common stock. 
They probably would be superior if it was not for their exhorbi- 
tant cost, but by the use of the in and in breeding, or the free poten¬ 
cy as we call it, we approach more than half way to the full blood 
by the first cross, and the only means in the reach of the common 
farmer, is by an improvement of the common stock by the thorough¬ 
bred. The first cross is more than half way towards the thorough¬ 
bred, owing to the intensity of this in-and-in breeding for several 
years; and this may be made comparatively cheap in that way. 
They are not superior, but they are cheaper. 
Mr. Clark, of Green County. The matter on which the address 
of our President touches is a matter of importance and touches the 
vital interest of all farmers—the improvement of his land. And 
as he referred to one experiment in the way of plaster, I will say, I 
came into Wisconsin in a late day, only four or five years ago, and 
I was told that plaster had no effect on the lands of Wisconsin, and 
for three or four years I didn’t try any. But two years ago I went 
and got two barrels of plaster and sowed it on some clover on a 
poor piece of ground, on which the wheat a year before I could not 
bind. On the east and north of that ground was some new land 
which had only raised one crop, and when I mowed I had two tons 
on the ground where the plaster was, and where I didn’t sow plas¬ 
ter I could not get half a ton; but on the new ground I got about 
a ton, and I got a large crop of seed on the old ground, and but a 
medium crop on the new. And the next year I sowed it with 
plaster again, and the wheat on the plastered ground some of it fell 
down. On the unplastered ground, some of it was only six inches 
high, and right by the side of that, on the plastered ground, it was 
three feet high. And it seems to me a very silly thing in farmers 
