The clovers, red, white, alsike and alfalfa and peas are legumes, and potent introducers into the soil of the most expensive chemical fertilizer known to the farmer, namely, nitrogen. Following these crops the following year may be produced better grain crops than can be harvested from the best summerfallowed land, and by following, this plan year by year, alternating the wheat, oats and barley the lands which produced clover, peas and roots the preceding year, it will be entirely feasible to duplicate these ordinary yields and prices for an indefinite term of years. We submit that no man is entitled to sympathy who can show gross receipts per acre of $22.50 per annum, when the usual average of the United States is less than $6. No account has been made of the disposition of the 40 acres of clover hay, easily capable, after the first year, of the production of 100 tons of hay, worth $5 per ton, nor of the 75 tons of pea forage, worth $1.50 per ton, as compared with clover, or of the good clean, bright straw from the 80 acres of grain. If the grain is stacked and also the threshed straw, this is worth easily $1 per ton, and at the rate of a ton per acre (a safe estimate), $80 can be realized for a crop which is too often consumed by fire to the actual detriment of the land. But speaking within bounds, after providing for the forage wants of the six horses required to farm this land, and of the four cows, which selfrespect should require to be on each farm for the supply of the milk and butter there consumed, the residue of forage ought to be adequate to the stall fattening of forty steers, which should pay a profit of at least the estimated value of the forage crop, $600, for the added value from feeding such a ration during the three winter months.

Should it not be possible to procure steers to be fed, lambs would pay quite well, or aged wethers, or open range stock, say 100 head, can usually be contracted for winter feeding, at $1 per month, or $500 for such a herd.

The benefit deriving from their droppings will easily offset the value of the labor in feeding in any case. This profit, added to the other farm receipts, will bring the gross revenues up to $4,200, certainly a favorable showing to be produced on 160 acres of land.

The Irrigation Question.

The Fact That Artificial Watering of the Great Semi-Arid Districts Must Be Accomplished by the General Government Is Popularly Accepted-The Wealth It Would Bring to the Country as a Whole-Project Too Large for Private Capital.

The last report of this bureau discussed at some length the proposed reclamation of the semi-arid district under state auspices, acting through state legislation under the offer of title by the Cary Act of Congress, but since that date there has been a more than appreciable growth of sentiment in the east, as well as in the west, in favor of the undertaking by the general government, not only for such districts within this state, but for the arid regions of the states lying to the south. The east is beginning to appreciate that the cultivation of the semi-arid lands of the west by means of irrigation opens an almost boundless field of possibility. The character of the soil, the climate, and all the natural conditions, are such as to insure immense productiveness under the most favorable conditions if only the natural water supply can be used. Contrary to a somewhat general belief, the amount of water now used is only a small fraction of the available supply, and enough water runs to waste every spring to irrigate every acre that requires artificial watering to make it produce to the maximum of its capacity, and that can be covered within a reasonable expenditure. After leaving the closer foothill district that borders the ranges in Montana, practically all the bench and prairie lands that stretch for hundreds of miles to the eastern boundary of the state, can be watered by the supply that can be conserved in the immediate mountain catchments, and, after the construction of the reservoirs and the canals leading the waters through the foothills, may be carried to this immense district at a nominal cost per acre. But the utilization of the abundant waters of the mountain ranges that now go to flood the lower Missouri and Mississippi, and the diversion of water from some streams of abundant volume to distant areas of land, are problems for which the resources of private capital are insufficient. The irrigation of the arid lands of the west by means of long ditches and large reservoirs is peculiarly a field for national aid. It is something that cannot be accomplished in any other way, and it is also something that will be immensely valuable to the entire country, so much so that the national government may use for that purpose money raised by taxation with as much propriety as for the improvement of the harbors along the sea coast. The national lands are an asset of the nation, and their improvement is an investment that is certain to bring magnificent returns to

every interest, industry and individual in it. The soil cannot be made to produce without adding of its wealth to that of the nation. The scheme of irrigation, like that of transportation, covers many states and benefits all parts of the country, and properly belongs to the general government to put it in effect.

This view was accepted by Congress when it made an appropriation in 1887 of $100,000 to be used by the director of the geological survey, for the purpose of ascertaining the feasibility of establishing reservoirs of water with a view to the establishment of a system of irrigation, and to ascertain to what extent the arid regions of the United States could be benefited by such a system, and several reservoirs with large catchments were located along the eastern slope of the Rockies in Montana, and estimates have been made upon the cost and amount of arid land, and that which can be reclaimed for agricultural purposes, has been determined, as well as that for timber and grazing. The precipitation of the different arable sections of the state lying within the semi-arid region, has been accurately taken, and every form of data secured necessary to an intelligent undertaking of the project by the national government

The rapidly growing belief that this work should be undertaken by the general government, led to the organization of the National Irrigation Association, and through its efforts a great deal has been done in educating the commercial and other interests of the country to the importance of the project to the entire country, and in demonstrating that while the location of the work may necessarily be sectional, that the benefits that must accrue must be equally advantageous to the prosperity of the entire country. Many of the cities of the middle states and the east have fully appreciated the logic of the situation, and have added their organized influence to furthering the general demand for national irrigation of the arid west. The business men and their associations have taken the matter up, and as a sample of this work, the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association of St. Paul, Minnesota, recently issued a letter that stated:

That they had "carefully considered the policy advocated by the National Irrigation Association for the reclamation and settlement of the arid region of the United States, and endorse it fully, as set forth in the constitution of the association,' annexed hereto.

"That policy in brief is that the Federal government shall, wherever necessary, build the irrigation works required for the reclamation of the arid public lands, reimbursing itself from sales of the land reclaimed; and that a fair share of each river and harbor bill shall hereafter go for building. storage reservoirs, as recommended in the Chittenden Report on Surveys for Reservoir Sites.

"We believe that the inauguration of this policy would be largely beneficial to St. Paul, and all its business and property interests, through the rapid settlement and development that it would bring about in the great arid region in Montana and other arid states commercially tributary to St. Paul. When we consider that nine-tenths of Montana is government land; that Montana is larger than Ohio, Indiana and Illinois combined; that at the last census