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historical survey of local areas may help to advance the cause
of history.
  The history of agriculture in Wisconsin is believed to pos-
sess so much inherent interest to Wisconsin people, that the
publication of this sketch as a separate volume, of moderate
size, is fully justified. To the full extent of the present edi-
tion, it is thus made immediately available for the use of
libraries, farmers' clubs, schools, and individuals in both pub-
lie and private stations.
  I desire to make emphatic my description of the present
volume as a sketch of the history of agriculture. No claim of
finality in the study of that subject is made, and I am well
aware that the rigorous exclusion of many sub-topics which
others would have stressed in writing a similar work would
subject this book to criticism, were its claims less modest. I
had in mind to write down, in minimum space, just those
things which would be most useful in connection with the local
studies for which the book is the background. A number of
topics, like lumbering, railway building, mining, manufactur-
ing, commerce, and labor, have been treated with relative com-
pleteness by Frederick Merk in connection with his admir-
able study of the Economic History of Wisconsin during the
Civil War Period, which was published by this Society as
Studies, Volume I. For the present, and until more complete
studies of the same topics for the entire period of Wisconsin's
history can be undertaken, those portions of Merk's book
which deal with them will serve the highly useful purpose, in
conjunction with this history of agriculture, of underpropping
the Town Studies. Other topics, as for example agricultural
education, agricultural organization, agricultural finance, call
for such extended special investigations that for practical
reasons their treatment had to be deferred to a later time.
  The bequest by the late Senator George B. Burrows of the
major part of his estate to the State Historical Society, which
has power to employ the income thereof for purposes of this
nature, enables the Society to publish the present volume and
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