66 
STATE AGEICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
Society, tlie Wisconsin Agricultural Association, located at 
Milwaukee, and the Fruit-gTowers’ Association of Wisconsin, 
some thirty-seven county agricultural societies, three or four 
union societies, embracing two or more towns, each, as the 
field of their operations, and a number of town clubs. 
The State Agricultural Society had been organized ten years ; 
during which;time it had held ten general exhibitions, distributed 
premiums to the amount of about $20,000, together with a 
large amount of new varieties of seeds, plants, cuttings, &;c., is¬ 
sued six volumes of much value to the industrv of the State, 
t/ • 
and established relations of coiTespondence and exchange of 
publications with all the leading organizations of like general 
character and aims in this country and in Europe. 
The thirty-seven county societies, organized at different 
periods, had been actively engaged in the good work of ad¬ 
vancing the industrial interests of their respective counties, 
and at the expiration of that first period v^ere able to point 
with pride to the many fruits of their labors in the form of 
improved stock, implements and crops, and a better appreci¬ 
ation on the part of the farming community of the importance 
of system and thorough culture. 
The town clubs were organized with the view of contribut¬ 
ing to these important general results by the discussion of 
practical and scientific questions pertaining to agriculture, and 
by the founding of libraries of useful books looking to the same 
end. Some of them had frequent regular meetings, and pub¬ 
lished reports of their discussions and conclusions in iheir local 
newspapers for the benefit of the wider communities of county 
and State. 
During the war, many societies of these several classes dis¬ 
continued their annual exhibitions, and a few of them in the 
newer counties have not resumed active operations since. The 
number of county societies reporting to the Secretary of State 
and to this office in 1867, and receiving the annual appropri¬ 
ation of $100 provided for by law, was 28; showing a differ¬ 
ence of nine societies not yet sufficiently revived to resume 
