92 THREE ACRES AND LIBERTY 



The experiments are most important, and we are probably 

 on the eve of as great advances in agriculture as in electricity, 

 but the human race has a great love for " inoculation, " and 

 indeed for all unnatural processes. 



You remember the story of the wonderful coon that Chand- 

 ler Harris tells? No? They were constantly seeing this 

 enormous coon, but always just as they almost got their 

 hands on him, he disappeared. One night the boys came 

 running in to say that the wonderful coon was up in a per- 

 simmon tree in the middle of a ten-acre lot ; so they got the 

 dogs and the lanterns and guns and ran out, and sure enough 

 they saw the wonderful big coon up in a fork of the tree. 

 It was a bright moonlight night, but to make doubly sure 

 they cut down the tree and the dogs ran in the coon 

 wasn't there. 



"Well, but, Uncle Remus," said the little boy, "I thought 

 you said you saw the coon there." 



" So we did, Honey," said the old man, " so we did ; but it's 

 very easy to see what ain't there when you're looking for it." 



Another method of increasing fertility at increased ex- 

 pense deserves notice. The vacant public lands are for the 

 most part desert-like, and their utilization can come about 

 only through irrigation. 



This land can be made to produce the finest crops in the 

 world; and the tremendous volumes of water that flow 

 from the mountains to the sea, once harnessed and piped or 

 ditched to this land, will transform it into beautiful gardens 

 and farms. 



With the work being done by the United States Govern- 

 ment, and that of the various states, we may look forward 

 in the not distant future to this land being made habitable 

 to man. 



