Entered According to Act of Congress in the year 1887, by CRAMER, AIKENS & CRAMER, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. PREFACE. An act providing for Agricultural Institutes was introduced by Hon. C. E. Estabrook, of Manitowoc, at the session of 1884-5, appropriating five thousand dollars, and putting the same into the hands of the Board of Regents of our State University, in accordance with this law. Thirty Institutes were held in different parts of the State during the winter of 1885-6, and were well received by farmers generally, making an advance in the agricultural heart and brain, stimulating animal husbandry, and improved methods in the various departments of farming. The tendency of these Institutes has been to awaken inquiry, to promote comparisons of methods, to pool their experience, and create a desire for a more extended intelligence, that in the end will exalt farming to a profession. When this is accomplished farming becomes a pursuit, a science that will attract the progressive thinkers of the day. Intelligence, system, business principles and well-defined purpose will bring as great success on the farm as in any other business pursuit. The following papers are selected from many hundred that were read and discussed at the Institutes, and teach the most approved methods in all departments of farm work. The work of the editors has been one wholly of compiling, leaving the individual expression of the author to be its own interpreter, and as such we give it to the reader, as a compendium of Wisconsin's richest experience of agricultural literature. W. H. MORRISON. MADISON, WIS., Jan. 10, 1887. 246981 |