100 
STATE AGKICULTUKAL SOCIETY. 
ready awakened so deep and active an interest in all parts of 
the West that it is highly probable that the plans for enlarg¬ 
ing the Erie canal, and for otherwise facilitating commercial 
relations between the eastern and western portions of the 
country will be carried into execution at an early day; to 
which end it is earnestly hoped that the Legislature of this 
State will omit no action that may properly be taken to insure 
their success. If, in addition to the execution of these plans, 
some just regulation could be devised and enforced, by which 
our own railroads could not lawfully charge so large and un¬ 
limited a proportion of the market price of grain for carrying 
it from the interior of the State to the lake shore, such meas¬ 
ure would also materially conduce to the prosperity of the ag¬ 
riculture of the State, and have the cordial approbation of the 
great body of the people. 
The second remedy relates to a change in our system o^ 
farming, and is therefore within the control of the farmers 
themselves. 
It is an established principle of agricultural science that no 
soil, however rich naturally, can produce a full crop of any 
kind, without either rotation or manure, for an indefinite suc¬ 
cession of years. And it is, in part, because of a practical dis¬ 
regard of this fundamental principle, that our agriculture, 
though its aggregate results are often large, is nevertheless so 
much less productive than it should be. 
Since the early settlement of Wisconsin, wheat has been 
cultivated to the exclusion of much else that might have been 
more profitably produced, and to the serious neglect of stock¬ 
growing, so essential ta the continued fertility of the soil. 
The great crop of 1860, which should have been attributed to 
unusual favorableness of season and to the protracted drouth 
of the year previous, has had the effect to encourage a continu¬ 
ation of this fallacious practice, and it would seem necessary 
that failure should succeed failure in order to an ef&cient cor¬ 
rection of the error. 
The cultivation of sorghum, which had been to some 
extent introduced before the commencement of the war, has 
