TRANSACTIONS. 
GENERAL REPORT. 
To His Excellency^ Lucius Fairchild, 
Governor of the State of Wisconsin: 
Sir :— 
In complying with the provisions of section 6 of chapter 80, 
of the Kevised Statutes, and of chapter 74 of the General 
Laws of 1868, it has seemed proper to precede the detail of 
the transactions of the State Agricultural Society, for the sev¬ 
eral years respectively since the date of our last published re¬ 
port, with a brief general survey of the whole period em¬ 
braced. 
The year 1860, of which Volume VI was a comprehensive re¬ 
port, was a golden year in the history of our commonwealth. 
By a steady influx of population from the Eastern and Mid¬ 
dle States, and from the best portions of the Old World, Wis¬ 
consin had risen, as if by magic, from the sparsely inhabited 
territory of twelve years before, to the dignity of a great and 
prosperous State, with more than three-quarters of a million 
souls, and eight representatives and senators in the common Na¬ 
tional Council. Her broad expanse of beautiful and fertile 
lands, though even then but partially and poorly cultivated, 
were yet able to challenge the older of the States to a compar¬ 
ison of the aggregate production of staple crops ; the wheat 
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