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WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
DAIRY FARMING. 
Prize Essay. 
BY BEY. S. B. LOOMIS, LONE BOCK. 
It has not been many years since the exclusive dairy became 
known. In the northern part of Herkimer county, New York, 
where frosts rule early in autumn and late in spring, where 
long continued cropping and precarious harvests had compelled 
“some other way,” there the dairy exclusive was first formed. 
Backed as those northern towns were by continuous forests 
northward for eighty miles, situated also among the highlands 
of the Adirondack mountains, with springs and streams of the 
purest water, with copious and frequent showers in summer, 
and deep snows in winter, made them probably the best place in 
the world to give this important industry the rank and place 
it has assumed, at present, among the other employments of 
man. 
That it has proved profitable, it is only necessary to study 
the market reports of each week, as they are chronicled by the 
metropolitan and agricultural press, and also to become per¬ 
sonally acquainted with those families following this avocation. 
Their homes, their social position, all denote that it is as remu¬ 
nerative as any branch of agriculture. It has an advantage 
over grain raising, as ordinarily pursued, in that it must im¬ 
prove the soil, while grain raising may deplete it. Another ad¬ 
vantage it has, that not only lands favorable to the raising cf 
grain but those where the plow may not go, the hill sides, ra¬ 
vines, and the bluffs may be made to pay tribute; in fact, from 
such sources the sweetest herbage is derived, to such places the 
herd instinctively wanders and from thence brings the burden 
