ANNUAL REPORT—AGRICULTURE. 
21 
latitudes however, and can hardly be said to have established 
its adaptedness to Wisconsin, even in localities where winter 
wheat ordinarily succeeds. The Arnautka wheat, a spring 
variety, imported by the agricultural department from Eussia, 
and distributed through the medium of this office, promises 
well; making in a majority of cases, where the circumstances 
were favorable, a bountiful yield. It is a bearded wheat, 
with remarkably large heads; the berry is also very large and 
handsome. It*is the opinion of some who have tried it, that 
upon new lands, to which especially adapted, the yield may 
reach forty to fifty bushels per acre. 
There has been no change in the current opinion among 
agriculturists, that occasional change in variety is important to 
the success of wheat-growing, and neither the national de¬ 
partment of agriculture nor the agricultural societies can be 
too pains-taking in the matter of seeking for and introducing 
such new varieties as promise adaptation to our climate and 
soils. For if we are to devote ourselves, in the .northwest, 
chiefly, and many of us almost exclusively, to wheat-growing, 
this question of varieties is one of very great importance. 
The misfortune seems to be that no variety has yet been dis¬ 
covered that will flourish independent of all conditions of soil; 
since it has not only become the general practice, but seems to 
be the fixed purpose, of our farmers to ignore the question of 
soil, as not entering into the problem of success ! 
But on this head remonstrance is vain. In traveling about 
the state, one is less frequently offended than formerly by the 
sight of burning straw-stacks, and the laborious moving of 
barns to escape the nuisance of manure heaps; but the prac¬ 
tice of taking active measures for the reinforcement of the 
soil, by the careful return to it of the necessary elements of 
which it has been deprived by successive years of reckless 
robbery, is still very exceptional. The long-practiced and 
selfish policy of creaming our lands for our ov;n present advan¬ 
tage, and leaving our successors to take care of themselves, 
continues, and is likely to continue until the wave of westward- 
moving population shall have swept over our entire vast area 
t 
