WISCONSIN STATE AC HI CULTURAL SOCIETY . 
sarily be a successful farmer of Wisconsin. His New England 
experience will not fully take the place of Wisconsin experience. 
Two series of crop-raising have been carried on in Wisconsin, 
the one extending over thirty years, more or less ; the other, over 
thousands of years. The one has been performed by man, the 
other by nature. The one has been as capricious as man’s will, 
the other, not more varying than the conditions of nature. The 
shorter course is well known to you, and furnishes an indispen- 
pensable guide in your operations. A knowledge of the results 
of the longer series cannot fail to be of value to the farmer who 
takes a comprehensive view of his profession. This, the survey 
is attempting to furnish. 
In the region which it has been my privilege to study during 
the past summer, viz., the east central part of the state, nature 
as the result of the experience of these thousands of years, has seen 
fit to raise at least four distinct crops upon the uplands, and about 
an equal number upon the lowlands. 
These crops do not consist of a single plant, but of a group of 
plants so related as to flourish together, and indeed to a greater or 
less extent to be dependent upon each other for their mutual well 
being. Some plants grow only in association with certain other 
plants. Nature’s method, then, is to raise mixed, not simple 
crops. How far it may be profitable to imitate her in this respect 
can only be determined by trial. It is a very common impression, 
and doubtless a correct one, that wheat grown among oats is both 
better in size and quality, and less liable to the attacks of its 
enemies, and that other crops may be associated at least without 
apparent injury, if not with real benefit to both. How far any 
advantage of this kind may be offset by the practical difficulties 
of the method, must be decided by experience. 
The four groups above referred to as occupying the uplands are 
the well known herbaceous vegetation of the prairies, the open¬ 
ings and forests in which the oak predominates, the maple and 
their associates, and, as occupying the wet lands, the grasses and 
sedges, the mosses, the cranberries, and the tamaracks. [The areas 
occupied by each of these groups were shown in color upon a map 
constructed for the purpose. Attention was called to the useful- 
