286 
STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
yond the most sanguine expectations; the Messrs. Wright 
repeated their experiment the next year and raised a beautiful 
plump grain, heavier per bushel by several pounds than the 
general average, and at the rate of 25 bushels per acre, (some 
of the stumps remaining in the field.) 
In 1858 the author of this communication exhibited a num¬ 
ber of Superior products at the Sixth Exhibition of the U. S. 
Agricultural Society, at Richmond, Va., and was awarded the 
diploma of the Society for them. The Lake Superior Agri¬ 
cultural Society was organized by Mr. J. S. Ritchie, July 18, 
1859. 
Great attention has been devoted to the collection and 
arranging of agricultural, botanical and mineral specimens, 
from our region, and the collection is now believed to be the lar¬ 
gest in the north-west. The varieties of our beautiful white and 
red winter and spring wheat, timothy, rye, oats, barley, toma¬ 
toes, tobacco, vegetables, &c., are exhibited in handsome glass 
jars, greatly to the astonishment of farmers from the Middle 
States, who have never seen rye 8 feet in height, wdiite winter 
wheat weighing 65 pounds per bushel, pea vines 12 feet in 
length, tobacco leaves three feet in length, and potatoes weigh¬ 
ing from 2 to 3 pounds. 
The LT. S. National Agricultural Exhibition at Cincinnati, 
Ohio, awarded Mr. J. S. Ritchie another special diploma in 
1860, for the products of Lake Superior, and he has yet to 
find white winter and spring wheat either in Chicago, Detroit, 
Cleveland, New York or Philadelphia, to compare with that 
raised in Douglas County, or celery, cucumbers, cabbages, 
peas, &c., raised within a few hundred yards of Lake Superior. 
It is hardly worth while to enter into a minute description 
of our soil, when w'e have such astonishing proofs of its capac¬ 
ity for cereals, tobacco, &c. The numerous specimens exhibited 
by the L. S. Agricultural Society will go much farther than 
volumes of books or newspaper articles. They speak for 
themselves. Dr. Owen, the celebrated U. S. Geologist has given 
in his report to the Government a full description of the red 
clay or marl lands of Lake Superior. He says; “The red 
