STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 6 



paying in their nature, they certainly would respond by establishing 

 local experiment stations, the only practical way in which the ques- 

 tion can be met. 



It is too much to expect individual effort will experiment for 

 years with, perhaps, barren results. And the temptation to foist on 

 the public new varieties of doubtful merit for the purpose of gain 

 is very great ; as to the location, the conditions are different, seasons 

 have changed. Thirty years ago much of the land was in its native 

 state, unfenced, unscarred by the plow. The prairie grass at home 

 in its beauty and strength, often tall enough to hide a man on 

 horseback, but finally weakened by old age and biting frosts, 

 tumbled down in a mass sufficient to choke the water ways and 

 shade the ground. Consequently streams were longer drying up ; 

 pools were larger and more frequent and ponds dotted the land ; 

 heated air drank from their surface and returned in such copious 

 showers, that the question was how to plow so as to get rid of sur- 

 plus water, and high rolling land was preferred. 



All this has changed. The prairie grass, like the Indian, has faded 

 before the white man's touch. The ponds have dried up and holes 

 in the creeks where fish used to disport themselves scarcely contain 

 water sufficient to satisfy the cravings of thirsty cows. There is 

 now more danger from a semi-arid condition during the growing 

 seasons than ever from surplus water. The quantity the soil and 

 sub-soil is capable of holding and giving up for the use of plant life, 

 under favorable circumstances, should be more thoroughly under- 

 stood. 



Thanks to the thoughtful minds who have studied and are still 

 studying to blaze the way so that we may follow up and utilize the 

 facts they have or may bring to light. What can be more strik- 

 ingly impressive than the experiments of Professor Hunt, as given 

 by Professor Burrill on page 115, of Horticultural Report for 1887, 

 with the two cans ? The uncultivated evaporating or giving up 

 within a fraction of double the amount of the cultivated one. 



That experiment ought, as it were, to burn itself into the mind 

 of every horticulturist and farmer. 



The year 1854 will be remembered as an exceptionall}' dry one. 

 Corn only grew a few inches high in large sections of the country. 



Orlando Burrill, present sheriff of White County, planted that 

 year forty acres of corn, and abandoned all but thirteen, and his 

 father advised him to abandon that, as he would only be throwing 

 his work away; but having nothing else to do he tended it every 

 week. He not only had corn, but good corn — more than was raised 

 in all the balance of the township. 



Every effort should be made not only to catch and hold the 

 summer showers, but to utilize all the soil and subsoil has in store 



