JAMPBELL'S SOIL CULTURE MANUAL 291 



It has been demonstrated on many model farms main- 

 tained by western railroads and on hundreds of private 

 farms, that all that is necessary on the plains and in the 

 inter-mountain parks and valleys is intelligently to make 

 the most of the rains and snows that fall in order to grow 

 as good crops as can be raised anywhere. In other words, 

 farming methods must be adapted to natural conditions. 

 This seems so simple and self-evident that the only wonder 

 that men have been so slow in finding it out. It ought not 

 to be hard to believe that lands that produce the rich 

 buffalo and grama grasses of the plains without cultiva- 

 tion, can be made to produce crops still more valuable 

 with cultivation adapted to the soil and climate. 



However, what the National Department of Agricul- 

 ture, the various state governmnts, and the great railroad 

 corporations have at last been made to see, has been dem- 

 onstrated every season for twenty years consecutive by 

 Mr. H. W. Campbell, of Lincoln, Nebraska, the pioneer 

 "dry farmer" of arid America. In sc'ores of places from 

 the James river to the Arkansas he has been uniformly 

 successful in producing without irrigation the same results 

 that are expected with irrigation, with comparatively little 

 additional expense, but not without more watchfulness 

 and care. What western people have become accustomed 

 to calling the "Campbell system of dry farming" consists 

 simply in the exercise of intelligence, care, patience, and 

 industry. 



Dry farming is essentiallv scientific farming, and for 

 that reason the term used by Mr. Campbell, "scientific 

 soil culture," is perhaps, more truly descriptive than the 

 popular term. Nevertheless, its principles can be, and are 

 applied just as successfully by men who have as little of 

 the education of the schools as they are by the college grad- 



