44 
WISCONSIN STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Great efforts have been made of late years to improve the 
old methods of making butter and cheese, and with most 
excellent results. Foremost among those most prominent in 
this good work has been, and still is, Mr. X. A. Willard, A. M., 
of New York, who by his carefully conducted experiments, 
his valuable editoral articles in the Rural New Yoi'ker, his con¬ 
tributions to foreign journals, his lectures in the Maine State 
Agricultural College, and his numerous addresses, delivered in 
all parts ot the country, has done a highly important work. 
In view of which we deem ourselves fortunate in having 
secured for publication herewith a revised and enlarged 
edition of his recent contribution to the Journal of the Royal 
Agricultural Society of England, on “ American Butter-Mak¬ 
ing”—a paper which has been received with great favor 
abroad, and which will be read with still greater interest by 
the dairymen and farmers of this country. 
. * SHEEP. 
Sheep husbandry is still under a cloud, for the reason given 
in our last report. A few of the more resolute, thrifty and 
persistent of farmers go ahead as though nothing had hap¬ 
pened, and are doing well; but the majority have not yet fully 
recovered from their disgust at the fall of prices after the war. 
The number of sheep in 1870 was 1,069,282, more than 
three times as many as the state numbered in 1860, and yet so 
far below the number (2,370,106) reported by Iowa, that we 
feel no inclination to boast of it. 
The rate of increase in the number of our sheep will appear 
by the following statistics: 
Number sheep in 1850 . 124, 896 
Number sheep in 1860 . 332, 954 
Number sheep in 1870 . 1,069,282 
If the quality of the sheep of Wisconsin be considered, it 
is believed that the comparison will be less to our disadvan¬ 
tage. A large number of our breeders have devoted them¬ 
selves to the importation of the very best sheep that could be 
