No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 645 



4,294 tons is sprinkled or poured on each and every acre of onr 

 farms. A man with a span of horses hauling thirteen one-ton loads 

 a day could not supply this volume of water to one acre by work- 

 ing 313 days in a year. Those of us who grumble when we have to 

 haul a few barrels of water for house use or the garden or young 

 orchard may be benetited by the thought that nature, in furnishing 

 us with water, alone expends an energy equal to the perpetual 

 service of a man and team for each and every acre on our farms. 



Before the forests were cleared the rainfall was more equally dis 

 tributed throughout the year. Now, increasing destructiveness of 

 Hoods and drouth cause untold millions of loss in fertility and crops. 

 Thirty-five years ago about twenty per cent, of the land southeast 

 of the mountains was woodland. Now there is less than five per 

 cent, in woods, and the portable sawmills are rapidly clearing 

 up this little remainder. It would be idle to claim that the destruc- 

 tion of the forests has been the sole cause of drouth and floods. The 

 Conewago was as low in 1816 as it ever has been since. But the dis- 

 turbance of the distribution of the rainfall throughout the year by 

 the destruction of the forests is a part of the history of this and of 

 every other woodland country. 



On the prairies the annual rainfall has risen as the groves, or- 

 chards and shelter belts have grown. We all know how quickly a 

 field dries in a windy day. We also know how long the mud stays 

 in a wooded road. In Kansas and Nebraska I have seen fields of 

 corn wilt and shrivel in the southwest wind, while adjacent fields, 

 protected by shelter belts, grew on in luxuriant, glorious green— 

 a dividend-paying monument to the taste and judgment of their 

 owners. In the prairie states it is no unusual thing to see shelter 

 belts from four to six rods wide, extending the whole length of the 

 western boundaries of the farms, and often on the north side as 

 well. A belt of trees four rods wide, on two sides of a quarter 

 section, occupies but eight acres, or five per cent, of the farm, and 

 in itself soon becomes a paying investment. Our State Government, 

 like that of neighboring states, is making an effort to obtain and 

 maintain forest reservations, and large tracts of cheap lands amount- 

 ing to more than a quarter of a million acres have already been 

 purchased for this purpose. If our Experiment Station, which has 

 already done such good work for the farmer, will investigate the 

 subject of shelter belts under conditions similar to those which exist 

 here, and then, if the results warrant, will bring about such legisla- 

 tive action as will compel every landholder to maintain a shelter 

 belt equal to five per cent, of his holding, it will do much to bring 

 about the return of past climatic conditions. 



This return cannot be made in a day and may not be made in a 

 century, and even when made it will be necessary for the farmer 

 to devise means to prevent the waste of the summer rain. This 

 waste occurs in two ways: By running off the surface, and by evap- 

 oration. The escape by drainage cannot be called waste. When a 

 soil is in good mechanical condition, is uniformly fine and loose, and 

 is full of humus, it will absorb and, if properly and continuously 

 cultivated, it will hold the greater part of the summer rain. If the 

 surface of the soil becomes crusted, as most of our clay lands do 

 after heavy rains, it will shed some and often much of the rainfall. 

 If we put a dry sponge by a moist one, and let a little water trickle 

 on each, we will find that the one will shed and the other will absorb 



