346 WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
cows, horses and sheep, are all valuable in this respect. To rot 
down the straw without stock is the work of years, and its 
gasses are scattered to the four winds, and its salts slowly 
set free are carried away by the rains. 
It is a mistaken idea that a moderate quantity of manure, 
properly applied, causes grain to lodge, for the soluble silicate 
of potash or bone earth of the straw is not required by the 
stock on the farm, and is thus returned to the land for future 
crops. 
Plaster—Sulphate of Lime. —This article has a three¬ 
fold effect. Its properties as a manure are equaled by its 
solvent properties to render substances fit for plant food, while 
as an absorbent of nitrogen and other substances for plant food 
it stands unrivalled; but it requires to be applied understand¬ 
ing^. Suppose the farmer who raises wheat alone and keeps 
little or no stock, should persistently apply large quantities of 
plaster to his land, the result would be, that at first it might 
increase his crop, but would only hasten the complete exhaus' 
tion of his soil, there being no compensating return of manure. 
But not so with the fanner who applies the plaster to his clover 
and feeds the clover on the farm, for he will increase the 
capacity of the land to carry more stock and produce more 
manure, and as the clover feeds largely on the subsoil and air, 
he is making heavy drafts on these and adding the same to 
his soil, and then he can make heavy drafts on the Farmer’s 
Bank, (his farm), and it will honor them in large crops of 
golden grain. 
Live Stock. —As no farm in Wisconsin can long maintain 
its productiveness that does not include in its management the 
keeping of live stock—for without it the end will be poverty 
of soil, poverty of purse, and the farmers’ sons driven to some 
other avenue of industry for a support, being disgusted with 
the idea of gaining a scanty support on a worn out farm—the 
question for the farmer to solve is not, shall he keep or not 
keep stock for the inexorable laws of nature have already 
solved that for him; but the question is to what kind of stock 
