406 Wisconsin State Agricultural Society. 
schools—at Alfort, Lyons, and Toulouse—where the diseases of cat¬ 
tle, sheep, horses, etc., are as carefully studied as human diseases 
are investigated at the best medical colleges. These imperial schools 
of agriculture are placed under the care and control of the minister 
of commerce and agriculture, who is also authorized to give the 
aid of the government in the encouragement of local enterprises 
for the promotion of agriculture. Individual enterprise in this de¬ 
partment has also had success. 
CONSERVATISM AND PROSPERITY 
go together in agriculture as in other departments of the divine 
and physical economy, and in governmental, commercial, and per¬ 
sonal operations or systems. In using the term u conservatism,” 
we mean a wise and diligent preservation or conservation of the 
elements or forces placed at man’s disposal by a beneficent Creator. 
Looking directly and squarely to the case of the agricultural pop¬ 
ulation of the west, in respect to existing and future conditions or 
facilities for the development of human happiness and public pros¬ 
perity; and viewing this munificent endowment of fertility of soil, 
ample forests, irrigating and navigable waters, and the immense 
capacities of this highly-favored country, as seen in the resources 
of our own good State of Wisconsin, with its frontage on waters 
that flow to the ocean by northern and southern channels, either 
as a patrimony or property subject to the absolute control or dis¬ 
posal of the present generation of its occupants and owners; or as 
a trust to be transmitted and handed down, with its accumulations 
or encumbrances, to succeeding generations; let us duly regard the 
mandates of sound policy as to its management, both in respect to 
present advantages and future needs, by working in harmony with 
the clearly indicated plan of nature, which is too often thwarted 
by man’s reckless and terrible destructiveness. 
ADMONITIONS OF HISTORY. 
We must recognize the palpable fact, verified, not only by obser¬ 
vation and experience, but by history, that no race or nation, or 
generation of men can make war against the order of nature, and 
derange the combinations of inorganic matter and organic life, and 
disregard the phj'sical conditions of the earth, and destroy the equi¬ 
librium in, or suspend the functions of the natural forces, and carry 
