136 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



by picking out young plants obtained from seed, or 

 sections of 'the rhizome, at a distance of a yard apart. 

 A combination of the two is most suitable. This is 

 best done in spring or late autumn. The next sea- 

 son the stems and leaves spread over the entire sur- 

 face of the soil. It is not necessary to give any man- 

 ure or culture when the plant is once established. It 

 may be added that the young leaves maKe a very 

 good vegetable for the table, less acid than sorrel, 

 less insipid than spinach. The vegetarians have 

 already used and appreciated it as a summer 

 vegetable. 



The Best Grain for Horses. Most farmers in 

 the central West and in the Southern States habitually 

 feed their work horses and mules with corn. Oats to 

 a certain extent serve to vary the diet somewhat, but 

 the staple grain ration is corn, usually fed unshelled 

 from the cob. A certain number of ears of corn are 

 served to the animal, which is expected to bite the 

 grains from the cob and consume the ration in his 

 own way. While corn thus served has generally 

 been regarded a cheap and hearty food, it is question- 

 able if it is by any means the best food for work ani- 

 mals, especially in warm weather. 



Street railway companies using horses as motive 

 power long since learned that horses fed too exclus- 

 ively on corn are short lived in their service, from the 

 tenderness of the feet induced by the too-stimulating 

 and feverish nature of the corn ration. Buyers for 

 such service on a large scale therefore avoid, so far 

 as possible, the corn-feeding districts or States, and 

 endeavor to make their selections of animals from 

 those parts of the country where corn is not regarded 

 as the staple diet. For this reason Canada, where 

 oats are generally fed, and California, where barley 

 is the staple food for horses, have been drawn upon 

 heavily for horses where endurance of hoof and mus- 

 cular fiber are especially required. 



Now that the price of wheat is very low as compared 

 with both corn and oats, it should be largely utilized 

 as a food for horses. Especially should wheat bran 

 be made to do duty in the ration for work horses in 

 place of corn. It is well known that wheat bran is 

 rich in phosphoric acid, and that it may be used with 

 great advantage to build up and sustain the waste of 

 muscle and bone alike in the horse that works. While 

 wheat in any form should not perhaps be used ex- 

 clusively as a food, yet a judicious mixture of wheat 

 bran with other forms of food daily, will be found of 

 great advantage in preserving the health as well as 

 the strength and general well being of work horses. 



But barley is an excellent food for horses of nearly 

 all ages and conditions, and the wonderful feats so 

 often performed by California horses are often attrib- 

 uted to a life-long diet of barley, both as grain and 

 hay. Practically no timothy or red clover hay is used 



in that State, and while alfalfa is used to a consider- 

 able extent, yet the great bulk of hay consumed, 

 especially by work animals, is made from barley or 

 wheat, cut before the grain hardens and cured as other 

 hay is cured elsewhere. 



Be your own Grocer and Butcher. Nothing 

 is of greater importance to the man established upon 

 a tract of irrigated land than is the matter of pro- 

 ducing, as nearly as possible, what is consumed upon 

 the family table. The more nearly the modern irri- 

 gator can approach to the traditional independence 

 of the old-time farmer the better. It is something 

 well worth striving for and will do very much to 

 give to the occupation of cultivating the soil the 

 dignity and standing it deserves. It should be a 

 matter of constant study with the practical irrigator 

 to so order and arrange his farming operations as to 

 decrease his cash outlay to a minimum by producing 

 a wholesome, abundant and sufficiently varied food 

 supply for home use. No one can come so near doing 

 this successfully as can the practical man who controls 

 a few acres of decent land and an adequate water 

 supply and he ought to do it. It will pay. 



Increase Potato Acreage. It is a remarkable 

 fact that while American farmers cultivated over 

 thirty-four million acres in wheat last year, which 

 yielded but eleven bushels to the acre, worth 53.8 

 cents per bushel at the farm, and while the equivalent 

 of over 180,000,000 bushels of that crop were sold 

 in European markets, yet the farmers are still import- 

 ing potatoes, while the farm value of the wheat crop 

 of 1893 was but $6.16 per acre, that of the potato crop 

 for the same year was over $41. The imports of 

 potatoes for the ten months ending with April last, 

 were 1,980,303 bushels, valued at ports of export at 

 $853,054 ; while for the ten months ending with April, 

 1893, the amount of potatoes imported reached 3,446,- 

 482 bushels, valued at $1,607,191. 



It can be thus seen that the acreage devoted to 

 potatoes in the United States, maybe extended some- 

 what with profit, while the wheat acreage certainly 

 should be curtailed very considerably. By raising no 

 potatoes for export, the duty on foreign tubers be- 

 comes operative and raises the price, not only of the 

 potatoes imported, but also of the entire crop in the 

 United States remaining unconsumed when import- 

 ations are made. 



A Kansas Enterprise. The people of a town- 

 ship in Finney county, Kansas, whose land lies high 

 and dry and is cut off from the possibility of securing 

 water from the Arkansas river, the only stream in the 

 vicinity, by an impassable range of sand hills, have 

 under consideration the formation of an irrigation 

 district on a novel plan. The Kansas irrigation law 



