100 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
In the department of Operative Machinery—owing chief¬ 
ly to the failure on the part of the Superintendent to pro¬ 
vide the means for satisfactory trials—the exhibition was 
quite inferior to what it should have been. But in the other 
departments it was excellent—in some, indeed, magnificent. 
Horses, especially in the Thorough-bred and Roadster classes, 
were of superior quality; Cattle in large numbers and of the 
best breeds; Sheeep, Swine and Poultry, fair in number and 
character. Of domestic animals, generally, the whole number 
of entries was 580—larger by sixty than at any previous fair. 
The department of Agricultural and Dairy Products was 
filled to overflowing with the finest products that we remember 
ever to have had the pleasure of seeing on a similar occasion. 
The show of grains of various kinds was especially worthy of 
commendation. Whole number of entries in this Hall, 568— 
108 larger than ever before. 
The exhibition of Fruits was also very fine—finer indeed 
than at either the United States, Ohio, Michigan or Illin¬ 
ois Fair of the same season; which is certainly gratifying to 
our State pride and highly creditable to the enterprise of the 
fruit-growers of Wisconsin who have struggled so manfully for 
years against serious climatic difficulties and all sorts of false 
prophecies. 
We cannot forbear in this connection to quote a few lines 
from the correspondence of Dr. Kennicott, of Illinois, published 
in the Prairie Farmer. Formerly Secretary of the Illinois State 
Agricultural Society and the leading horticulturist in the West, 
his words of complimentary reference are worthy of record for 
the encouragement of the farmers and fruit-growers of our 
State. They are as follows : 
“But, all praise to the genuine hard diggers—the real farmers of the 
Badger State—the Hall of Farm and Dairy Products was the crowning glory 
of the State Fair! A grand show—an immense show—a show worth going 
an hundred miles, and more, to see, in that one hall, alone. Here, Counties 
as well as individuals competed; and Pierce County—away up north, on the 
Upper Mississppi — showed enough, of itself, to eclipse more than one great 
State exhibition. Oh! such measures of wheat, oats, rye, barley, buckwheat, 
peas and beans—and such “traces” of yellow corn, I never saw before. And 
