DRY FARMING 



1SGS 



DRY FARMING 



faith was made known in 1687 by the publica- 

 tion of his Hind and Panther, a long poem 

 giving a supposed dialogue between a milk- 

 white Hind, typifying the Catholic Church, and 

 a spotted Panther, representing the Church of 

 England. On the accession of the Protestant 

 monarchs, William and Mary, he lost his office 

 of poet laureate, and the last years of his 

 career were devoted mainly to translations or 

 renderings of Vergil, Ovid, Boccaccio and 

 Chaucer. In 1687 he wrote the first of his 

 Songs for Saint Cecilia's Day, and in 1697 the 

 second of the lyrics was published as an ode 

 on Alexander's Feast, the concluding lines of 

 which are: 



At last divine Cecilia came, 



Inventress of the vocal frame ; 

 The sweet enthusiast, from her sacred store, 



Enlarged the former narrow bounds, 



And added length to solemn sounds, 

 With Nature's mother-wit, and arts unknown 

 before. 



Let old Timotheus yield the prize, 



Or both divide the crown ; 

 He raised a mortal to the skies, 



She drew an angel down. 



Dryden's greatness as a poet rests chiefly on 

 his mastery of verse form. He lacked the fire 

 and imaginative power of the writers of the 

 Shakespearean era, and his fame and popu- 

 larity as a poet suffered a permanent decline 

 when the splendid outburst of the Romantic 

 Period revealed the possibilities of the poetry 

 of inspiration and imagination (see ROMANTI- 

 CISM; WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM). As a critic, 

 however, and as the creator of an easy, grace- 

 ful and correct prose style, his fame is secure, 

 and his Essay on Dramatic Poesy, setting forth 

 his views on the rhymed couplet in tragedy, 

 is a masterpiece of criticism. B.M.W. 



DRY FARMING, or crop raising without 

 irrigation on lands which receive little rainfall, 

 has within recent years become so effective that 

 hundreds of thousands of acres once considered 

 half-desert are now fertile farms. In general, 

 if less than twenty inches of rain fall on a 

 piece of land within a year, dry-farming meth- 

 ods are necessary; if less than ten inches, irri- 

 gation alone makes the tract valuable. 



The success of dry farming depends upon 

 storing in the ground the moisture which it 

 receives. The methods chosen vary with the 

 conditions in each locality, such as the total 

 amount of rain, the seasons in which it falls, 

 its frequency and the rapidity of evaporation 

 and of drainage. Thus on the Canadian 

 prairies, where most of the moisture falls in 



summer, dry farming is conducted differently 

 thaji in Oregon, which has winter rain. So, too, 

 when rain falls in frequent light showers it has 

 a different effect from rain coming in violent 

 storms. Besides, the variations in evaporation 

 are so great that fifteen inches of rainfall in 

 Saskatchewan are more than the equivalent of 

 twenty-one inches in Texas. 



Canadian Methods. Farmers who settle upon 

 the prairies of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and 

 Alberta from Eastern Canada or other regions 

 of plentiful rain frequently insist upon treat- 

 ing their land as they had done in their older 

 homes. They usually fail. But those who fol- 

 low the dry-farming instructions which the 

 Dominion experiment stations have given 

 since 1888 raise larger crops of wheat than are 

 known in the United States, and have success 

 with other crops. 



Breaking and backsetting and summer-fallow- 

 ing are the processes recommended. If a farmer 

 raises a crop on new land the first year, he 

 will fail to secure a crop the next year, be- 

 cause he will have exhausted the moisture in 

 the soil. So the best plan is to seed only a 

 part of the farm. On the rest the prairie sod 

 is plowed, or broken, as shallowly as possible, 

 before the rains of early summer, which will 

 then rot the sod. Early in August the sod is 

 backset, or turned back to its original place, 

 with two or three inches of fresh soil over it. 

 It is then broken into powder with a disk- 

 harrow, an implement described in the article 

 HARROW. The moisture preserved in soil pre- 

 pared in this fashion will be sufficient for a 

 crop the next year. When this is cut, a high 

 stubble (the stumps of the grain stalks) should 

 be left to hold the snow, which will melt in 

 the spring and give the moisture necessary to 

 germinate the seed. At seeding time the stub- 

 ble may be plowed under or burned. After 

 the second crop the land should be summer- 

 fallowed, that is, left idle after being plowed 

 seven or eight inches deep in time to catch 

 the summer rains. Otherwise, except in a 

 year of unusual rainfall, the next crop will 

 suffer from drought. It is especially impor- 

 tant in dry farming to keep down the weeds, 

 for they rob the soil of water. 



In the United States. Interest in scientific 

 dry farming in the United States commenced 

 just before the end of the last century, when 

 several years of slight rainfall had caused im- 

 mense crop loss in the West. Summer-fallow- 

 ing, where it is found helpful, is usually prac- 

 ticed in alternate years instead of every third 



