IRRIGATION IN MINNESOTA. 313 



comes in sudden dashes percolates rapidly and deeply into these 

 soils and seeps or runs sideways and is lost to the land upon which 

 the rain falls, thus leaving- in the soil only a limited amount of 

 water. The air finding- ready access to these soils rapidly dries 

 them out; and the roots of plants finding- these soils congenial in 

 the early part of the season penetrate them widely and deeply and 

 when the drouthy midsummer comes are able to rapidly relieve 

 them of all the moisture they hold. The normal values of these 

 sandy lands can never be high, except in cases where barn5^ard 

 manures may be very cheaply procured to furnish fertilizing ingre- 

 dients and also humus to give the soil greater water-holding power. 



In the southern one-third of Minnesota most of the soils are re- 

 markable for their ability to drink in and long reserve large quan- 

 tities of water. There are even here, however, tracts of light soils 

 which are seriously affected during drouthy seasons, and this is 

 especially true of the southwestern portion of the state, where rain- 

 fall is less and where hot, drying winds in midsummer seriously 

 injure crops not well supplied with moisture. In the northwestern 

 corner of the state, in the large tract of country known as the Red 

 River Valley, the soil, though very level and having unusually large 

 abilities for absorbing water.sometimes has been found wantingand 

 would have drank in irrigation waters beautifully, much to the 

 profit of the wheat raisers or the producers of forage for stock and 

 especially of value to the gardener and small fruit raiser. In the 

 great northeastern portion of the state, there are tracts of light soils, 

 some of them very large, on which nearly every year crops would suf- 

 fer from drouth, and during the drier j^ears labor would be thrown 

 away to try to farm them. Most of these soils are poor or only medium 

 rich in plant food, but with a good supplj"^ of water plant food can 

 be secured, especially in stock farming, where very little plant food 

 need be removed from the farm, and where the fertility of swamps 

 and other rich lands can be fed to animals and the manure used on 

 the uplands. Many of these lands need irrigation nearly as badly as 

 do the rich lands in the drj' portions of Colorado. In passing it is 

 worth while to note another interesting feature of water control in 

 northwestern Minnesota: Part of the immense acreage of swamp 

 lands is going to be farmed, the larger portion, doubtless, will be in 

 permanent meadows. The drainage of these lands requires skill lest 

 the drainage be overdone. In fact, where practicable the ideal way is 

 to combine on these lands used mainl}' for forage and vegetable crops 

 systems of drainage and irrigation. Drainage often makes the peat 

 too drouthy and even endangers the meadow to the action of fires. 

 Where the peaty lands can be thoroughly flooded by means of irri- 

 gation, that the soil may be thoroughly wetted in the spring and 

 again after removing the hay crop, much larger crops will result. 

 This whole matter offers many problems for solution, some of which 

 we hope to study at our North-East Experiment Farm, where we 

 have possible facilities for irrigating various kinds of soil, in fact 

 the farm having been chosen with that as one of the things in view. 



Our friends who are booming immigration at first feared to have 

 the subject of irrigation mentioned in their meetings, thinking that 

 people would come to regard this as a drouth3^ climate. We must 



