EXHIBITION OF 1868. 
[From the Secretary’s Record.] 
The Fifteenth Annual Exhibition of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society 
was held at Madison, commencing Sept. 28th and closing Oct. 2d. The 
grounds were furnished with better improvements than ever before ; some 50 
box stalls, for horses, having been added, and two neat and spacious halls— 
one for the Agricultural and the other for the Manufacturers’ Department, 
substituted for the unsatisfactory canvas tents so long used by the Society. 
Machinery Hall was supplied with 100 feet of new line shafting, with a dozen 
30 inch pulleys, and furnished with a 20-horse power engine for driving ma¬ 
chinery. 
The Exhibition itself was one of the most successful ever held by 
the Society. The entries embraced fewer unimportant articles than usual, 
and a proportionally larger number of superior animals in the different de¬ 
partments, and of valuable implements and machines. The list of premiums 
awarded will illustrate these facts better than they can be established oth¬ 
erwise. 
The presence of metallic ores and their products—especially of lead ores 
and lead ; iron ores with iron and steel; zinc ores, with spelter and zinc 
oxide—constituted a new and interesting feature, which we have long been 
anxious to introduce. The objects of the Society extend to every branch of 
industry, mining and manufactures, no less than agriculture, and we would 
be glad always to have every department represented at our exhibitions. 
The samples of Bessemer steel in the form of a massive ingot, and numer¬ 
ous sections of steel rail for railways, from the Milwaukee Iron Works and 
the Wyandotte Works at Detroit, shown by Hon. E. B. Ward, chief proprie¬ 
tor of both establishments, were extremely interesting, as affording evidence 
of our ability to manufacture the best of steel for these uses. The ores used 
are those of lake Superior and Dodge county mixed. 
The samples^ of zinc oxide from the Bellvue Zinc Works, located near 
Mineral Point on the Mineral Point Railroad, were also of excellent quality, 
and besides were interesting and important as showing not what can be done 
in that line in Wisconsin, for as much can be done here as elsewhere, but 
rather'showing what is already being done to develope the mining interests 
of the State. 
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