36 
STATE AGEICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
1. It will not succeed on foul land. The land must he clean, 
else it will be choked out by the weeds, in its early growth, 
and amount to nothing. 
2. It requires to be harvested when the crop is ready. If 
allowed to get ripe before being cut, much of the seed will 
shell out and be lost, in spite of all that can be done. The 
time to cut is ivhile it is yet green, with the under pods just 
changing to yellow. 
The first of these objections ought really to be enumerated 
as an eleventh advantage. For if anything will compel our 
farmers to keep their lands clean, that’s what we want. And 
as for the second objection, it is one that may also be urged 
against wheat, or grass, or almost any other summer crop. 
The Fond du Lac mills have a capacity sufficient to work 
up 100,000 bushels of the seed, and there is little doubt but 
that the cultivation of rape will rapidly extend as its advan¬ 
tages become better known—not alone in that section of the 
state, but in others. 
Moist, rich lands are the best for it, but it will flourish on 
almost any of our prairie and clay lands. 
General Hamilton deserves the thanks of the farming public 
for his efibrts to introduce so desirable a plant into the agricul¬ 
ture of Wisconsin ; and, if its cultivation should become gen¬ 
eral, he will have even more reason to be proud of his achieve¬ 
ments in the field of industry than of his many successes on 
the field of arms. 
STOCK BREEDING, ETC. 
There is nothing of a very remarkable character to report 
under this head—unless it be the almost entire immunity 
all classes of Wisconsin stock have had, during the year, from 
the various diseases, which have been so destructive in some 
other portions of the country. In this particular, our state has 
for many years, been highly favored. Indeed it has never 
been visited by any of those sweeping epidemics, like the hog- 
cholera, murrain, pleuro-pneumonia, abortion in cows, the 
