42 
STATE AGRICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
/ 
included, deals so fully with this subject that I may properly 
confine my own remarks on behalf of the State Agricultural 
Society, within very narrow limits. 
The relation between the two organizations continues to be 
of the most cordial character ; and it is believed that, as they 
are devoted to interests indivisible, so they will each be 
actuated by a natural desire to perpetuate the harmony and 
good will by which their action has been governed in the 
past. 
It is not unusual, in these days of a higher appreciation of 
the value of such organizations to the industry of the country, 
for the state governments to extend a helping hand to them in 
the form of moderate annual appropriations. And if such a 
policy be a wise one anywhere, surely it is so in a state and 
climate like ours, not only less than the most favorable to the 
success of horticulture, but really involving almost annual 
discouragements and failures. 
THE MINING INTEREST. 
But little that is new and peculiar to the past year can be 
said of the mining interest, except that the iron mines of 
Dodge county have received much additional attention, and 
are in the way of being developed to an extent not heretofore 
attempted. 
But this exception, is one of great significance to the state, 
involving, as it does, three important facts, namely: (1) The 
discovery that the deposits of this ore are much more exten¬ 
sive than has been heretofore supposed ; (2) that the ore itself 
is more valuable than was at first believed, indeed a very val¬ 
uable ore; and (8) the fact that the requisite energy and capi¬ 
tal so recently invested in the iron manufacturing industry, at 
Milwaukee, are beginning to make themselves felt in a marked 
degree upon the development of the mining interest. 
The Dodge and Washington county ore—“Iron Ridge 
ore ”—is known by most of our citizens as being what is called 
“ seed ” or “ bog ” ore, and as occurring in small flattened 
nodules, cemented together, but easily crumbling into an earthy 
