No. 7. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 13 



late of seven tliotis'and pounds of milk annually we would have 14,- 

 770,000,000 pounds of milk every year or approximately 1,846,250,000 

 gallons. From this it is evident (and I have not stated impossible 

 quantities, that this State with intensive farming and with the right 

 kind of cows can produce sufficient milk and butter for all her citi- 

 zens and at the same time be Avorking for a permanent agriculture 

 by constantly increasing the fertility of the soil. 



EASTERN DRY FARMING 



With four inches less lainfall in Pennsylvania in 1010 than nor- 

 mal and wiih some counties up to eight and a half and even as much 

 as eleven and a. quarter inches less, as has been the case in recent 

 years in many localities, the question of eastern dry farming de- 

 mands attention. 



With this deficiency, if the rainfall would have been more equally 

 distributed throughout the growing season, there would have been 

 a sufticient precipitation for the growing of all farm crops in 1910., 

 To illustrate: During the month of April, with the exception of the 

 Ohio basin, there was an excess of rainfall throughout the kState or 

 approximately from one to five inches. If this excess of water could 

 have been stored in some way as Nature does for the use of her crops, 

 the deficienc}' in soil moisture that occurred from the latter part ot 

 June to well nigh the end of the year Avould not have been so in- 

 jurious. Nature's methods for preventing the water from getting 

 away by surface drainage (and approximately one-half of the water 

 falling in rain on the cultivated and uncultivated soil gets away in 

 this way) are first, the lowest species of plants growing on the rocks 

 and stony soils, the lichens, mosses and algae. These have a wonder- 

 ful capacity to take up or absorb moisture even from dew or the 

 smallest summer showers, by opening and exposing their algaeic 

 surfaces and again when the shower is over or when the morning sun 

 appears- closing and holding the absorbed moisture for their own and 

 the growth of other plant life as well as for the decomposition of 

 rocks. As plant life evolves from these lowly beginnings, sufficient 

 foliage is produced to shade the soil which helps to conserve mois- 

 ture, and when this plant life dies it falls on the soil and forms a 

 thicker surface mulch by means of which nature takes up and re- 

 tains a sufficient amount of water to sustain her plants during the 

 dry times caused by the unequal distribution of rain, and also pre- 

 vents the washing away of the soil she has made, thus doing dry and 

 wet farming all the time. When the farmer cleared the land he re- 

 moved nature's agencies for conserving soil moisture and therefore 

 he must adopt methods for retaining this moistuie that can be made 

 practical. 



The first thing a farmer does, after having removed the trees and 

 vegetable growth, he plows the ground turning down the surface 

 mulch already referred to. This breaking up of the soil will prepa.'e 

 it so that the rain will sink down into it and will not be carried 

 away by surface drainage. As an implement for conserving mois- 

 ture in all but sandy soils, the plow stands pre-eminent, because it 

 can be made to break up the soil and make it fine to a greater depth 

 than any other implement used in agriculture,, arrd the deeper and 

 finer a recently plowed soil is the more water it will hold. Frequent 



