TENTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART XI 709 



made it so. This year the exhibits of the State College at Ames, which 

 were artistically arranged and unusually well displayed, made the show 

 represent Iowa in a more complete manner than ever. The Iowa State 

 Fair has for years been recognized as the best live stock show in the 

 country. 



In the agricultural building the State Department of Agriculture had 

 a large display of a number of important agricultural products, such as 

 alfalfa and sugar beets. The alfalfa was unusually well displayed. Sam- 

 ples of the various food products manufactured from it were exhibited, 

 and figures showing the value of the crop as a feed for live stock, when 

 fed in connection with corn and other grain products, were displayed in a 

 conspicuous manner that apparently proved to be of great interest to 

 many farmers, who stopped to make detailed inquiries with reference 

 to growing alfalfa under the conditions prevailing on their farms. There 

 is no question but that this display alone was worth thousands of 

 dollars to Iowa farmers, particularly to those residing in sections where 

 alfalfa is known to yield excellent returns and where it can be grown 

 at a most excellent profit. While farmers who have never grown alfalfa 

 were not indiscriminately advised to begin growing it on a large scale, 

 many hundreds were advised to begin by seeding a small patch for the 

 purpose of determining its adaptability to sections in which it has not 

 been grown before. Once the farmer has learned that ho can raise alfalfa 

 to advantage he will soon realize its value as a forage as well as a soil- 

 building plant. 



One entire building was occupied by the State College in which the 

 character of the work done in the different departments of the college 

 was displayed in a very striking manner. It is impossible to call attention 

 to all the departments that were represented in this building, such as the 

 mechanical, engineering, civil engineering, farm crops, soils, agricultural, 

 chemistry, dairy, horticultural and agricultural extension departments. 

 Each department represented was of interest to every farmer on the 

 grounds, and especially to the young men and women contemplating a 

 course at the State College. Some departments appealed more strongly 

 to the farmer than others. The exhibits in the soils department attracted 

 a great deal of attention. A county soil map showing the different types 

 of soils in the state attracted special attention. The map showed the 

 Missouri loess belt in the western part of the staite, the southern Iowa 

 loess belt in the southern part of the state, the Wisconsin drift soils in 

 the north central portion of the state, and the Iowa drift and Mississippi 

 loess soils in the southern and eastern sections. The map was made 

 from the soils collected from the portions of the state they represented, 

 thus affording the farmers an opportunity to compare the soils of their 

 respective coimties with those in every other county in the state. 



Another feature in this department was an exhibit showing the effects 

 of cultivation on the water content of soils. A week before the fair opened 

 the soils department took samples of a number of soils that had been dif- 

 ferently treated with respect to cultivation. The water content of each of 

 these samples was determined and the amount of water they contained 



