KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. gl 



an island, a mile or more in length, and it comes so near the northern bank 

 of the river that at a point three- fourths of a mile below the upper end of the 

 island the channel between the island and the main land is but about twenty 

 feet wide. At this point, last February or March, some gentlemen, among 

 whom were Messrs. Landis & Hollinger, of Sterling, and Mr. W. H. Armen- 

 trout, of Garden City, under the name of "The Garden City Irrigating 

 Company," threw across this channel a dam of brush-wood and earth. By 

 this means they raised the water in this channel above the dam to the height 

 of nearly five feet, or almost up to the top of the river bank. Here they 

 commenced to dig a ditch eight feet wide and two feet deep. They made the 

 ditch to gradually recede from the river, as they extended it out across the 

 bottom land, so as to run, at the farthest, a mile or two from the river. The 

 ditch is ten miles long. 



It was late in June, almost July, before the ditch was so far completed as 

 that water could be used in the irrigation of fields adjacent to it; but, as late 

 as it was, sufiScient advantage was derived to crops to bring good results, and 

 the promise of the successful irrigation of large tracts of land in the Arkan- 

 sas valley, and even on the uplands. In the experiments tried, nothing like 

 fair tests were made, except in a few instances, and that principally in gar- 

 den patches. 



The persons engaged in this experiment did not go about their work with 

 a view of making, in this year's trial, accurate proofs of results ; hence no 

 exact evidence appears to be obtainable as to how much of any crop was 

 grown to the acre. Onions and turnips of very large size were still (last 

 week) standing in patches, from which many of the larger, or of earlier 

 growth, had been gathered and sold. Out on the " Great American Desert," 

 turnips sell at SI. 25 per bushel, and the temptation to gather and sell, as 

 they became large enough, was of course irresistible. Potatoes of the finest 

 quality and size were being dug, in fields where the stand is very scattering, 

 from the fact that the seed had dried up and the germ perished before the 

 ground received the water so that they could germinate. There are fields 

 of very scattering corn, of good growth and fair-sized ears, which was planted 

 on sod, late in June. There is abundant testimony to the fact that a patch 

 of sweet potatoes, the plants for which were raised in the open ground, with 

 no hot-bed of any sort, and which were set out in July, yielded nearly a 

 thousand bushels to the acre. The statement is, that there was a little more 

 than an acre of ground, and but little less than a thousand bushels of pota- 

 toes. There was no real measurement of the ground on which this extraor- 

 dinary crop was grown, and no account was kept of the number of bushels 

 dug and sold. They sold at $2.50 per bushel, and the money was the main 

 object. The owner of this crop, and of most of the crops irrigated, was 

 away in New Mexico most of the summer, looking after gold mines. He 

 was the only man in the settlement who knew anything by experiment of the 

 modes of the application of water in irrigation ; and on his farm, the irriga- 

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