154 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



PLANT FOOD RESERVOIRS. 



BY E. MIALL 8KEATS IN THE PECOS ARQUS. 



\17HAT an expanse of useless land," 

 W if often the remark and still 

 oftener the thought of people traversing 

 our foot hills. As well might they say 

 "what an expanse of useless water " when 

 they view our huge storage reservoirs. 



The foot hills are reservoirs of soil for 

 our valley lands. Immense amounts of 

 plant food are stored there and are being 

 manufactured into available forms every 

 year, and as they are manufactured are 

 distributed over the valley. 



Visit the hill now after the heavy rains 

 we have just experienced. Besides the 

 conspicuous Cacti, Yucca, Euphorbial, you 

 will be surprised at the number of small 

 some exceedingly small annual and 

 perennial plants covering the rocky ground. 

 Choose almost any of these and try and 

 pull it up by the roots. It resists. Lift 

 tip the flat stone adjoining and you find 

 the roots underneath ramifying sometimes 

 for several feet in as fine a vegetable 

 mould as any gardener would wish to 

 see. 



But see! There is actually an earth- 

 worm in it, right on top of the hill. And 

 how wet the soil is, though down in the 

 valley at the same depth it has become 

 fairly dry. 



You have surprised some of nature's 

 agents in full work in a veritable chemical 

 laboratory by lifting that stone. The 

 radiated heat from the flat stone fully ex- 

 posed above to the sun's rays has warmed 

 up the damp thin stratum of vegetable 

 soil, and given extreme impetus to the 

 root play of the plants in the crevices, the 

 evaporation from whose leaves is about 

 the only exit for the remaining moisture 

 in the soil. 



But this warmth has so enlivened 

 myriads of microbes which are rejoicing in 

 the feast of dead vegetable matter in the 

 soil, and their growth results in further 

 decomposition of the dead rootlets, and 

 the evolution of carbonic acid and other 

 gases. 



These gases, imprisoned under the slab, 

 attack the stone itself, till by very imper- 

 ceptible degrees, it crumbles away and 

 adds its valuable ingredients to the vege- 

 table soil. Nitrates in abundance are 

 formed in this damp, warm compound. 

 Phosphoric acid, rich in the stone, is made 



available, or partly so, for plant use, and 

 so are the lime and magnesia. 



The earth worm does his share; he 

 devours the dead rootlets and leaves and 

 swallows small particles of stone not de- 

 composed. He uses the stones as masti- 

 cators and wears them down till his strong 

 digestive fluids dissolve much of them 

 with the vegetable matter and what he 

 does not want for his own economy he 

 leaves for future generations of plants. 



By the time the next rains come 

 there is a store of the richest plant 

 foods in soluble form under this stone. 

 The first floods wash this out and carry it 

 to the nearest gully. It flows down this 

 onto the plains, where it is dispersed, and 

 much is caught and held by the heavier, 

 more clayey soil. In the spring, with the 

 strong west winds, much of this is still fur- 

 ther distributed over the valley and farms. 



Who can say that the foot hills are of 

 no use to us? 



FOREIGN MARKETS. 



In his annual report Secretary Morton 

 says during the fiscal year just ended the 

 exported products of American farms ag- 

 gregated $570,000,000, an increase of 

 $17,000,000 over the preceding year. In 

 spite of this there was a falling off in the 

 percentage of agricultural products ex- 

 ported to the total exports, but this was 

 due to the unprecedented sale abroad of 

 American manufactured goods. The prin- 

 cipal market for American products is 

 found in the United Kingdom of Great 

 Britain and her colonies. These English- 

 speaking people bought 58 per cent of all 

 exports from the United States in the fis- 

 cal year 1896. Together with Germany, 

 France, Holland, and Belgium, they pur- 

 chased 81.9 per cent of our entire output, 

 leaving 18. 1 per cent for the rest of the 

 world. 



The total consumption of meat in Great 

 Britain for the year was 1,100,000 tons, 

 75 per cent of which was produced at 

 home, the remaining 25 per cent being 

 imported. Of live meat arrived in the 

 United Kingdom during the first six 

 months of 1896 the United States sup- 

 plied 75.10 per cent of the cattle and 

 45.26 per cent of the sheep. The Glas- 

 gow market is especially recommended to 

 American shippers, as in that city cattle 



