32 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



BEET-LIFTING MACHINE. 



Among the agricultural implements 

 needed in cultivating the sugar beet no 

 machine is more useful than a good beet 

 digger. In fact, some such device has 

 become absolutely indispensable t every 

 one engaged in that kind of work. In or- 

 der to ascertain which is the best, the 

 Deutsche Landwirtschaft-Gesellschaf t 

 (German farming association) has opened 

 a prize competition, offering premiums 

 amounting to a total of $130. The exami- 

 nation of the competing machines is to be 

 held in the fall of the year 1900. An 

 additional prize will be given to that ma- 

 chine which will raise and top the beets 

 at the same time. 



In conjunction with the above associa- 

 tion, the Verein der deutschen Zucker- 

 industrie (association of the German 

 sugar industry) has offered prizes amount- 

 ing to $1,904 and $2,380. These prizes 

 will be given to machines that are not only 

 the best of those exhibited in the compe- 

 tition of the farming association, but that 

 in addition thereto come up to certain 

 other requirements and specifications set 

 forth in the conditions of the prize offer. 

 This competition is open to foreigners. 



BIG TIMBER FRAUDS IN WASHING- 

 TON STATE. 



Officers of the United States Govern- 

 ment are now investigating a gigantic tim- 

 ber fraud which has been perpetrated by 

 logging and milling companies in Western 

 Washington. These companies and firms 

 have been engaged for years in securing 

 large belts of most valuable timber in the 

 state. 



Many of these tracts were located in 

 Mount Kainier, Cascade and Olympia 

 forestry reserves. When these reserves 

 were set apart under the Cleveland ad- 

 ministration, it was provided that owners 

 of timber lands within reserves could deed 

 them to the government and receive in 

 lieu thereof an equal acreage of good 



standing timber obtainable elsewhere on- 

 government lands. 



There was no distinct provision that 

 lauds within the reserve should not be 

 denuded of their timbrr before exchange 

 was made, and neither was any date set 

 when such exchange should be made. 



The result has been that a number of 

 companies have made short work of log- 

 ging off great acres of timber lands withia 

 the reserves. Now they are ready to ex- 

 change these denuded lands for heavily 

 timbered government lands which their 

 cruisers have spied out. The government 

 has just discveored that portions of its 

 forestry reserves are now forestless, and 

 steps will be taken to prevent further 

 timber cutting on reserves. 



THE NEW ONION CULTURE. 



The growing of marketable onions i& 

 one of the most profitable and certain of 

 all farm products. Although many thous- 

 and acres are devoted to onion culture in 

 the United States, importations are made 

 from all the onion countries of Europe 

 to supply our demand. The increasing 

 markets of the orient, the Klondike,. 

 China and Japan make demands upon the 

 western farmers and truck growers that 

 cannot be supplied. Some growers har- 

 vest 1,000 bushels per acre, and the price 

 has ranged from $20 to $65 per ton during 

 the past few years. Several factories 

 have been built near the Pacific Coast 

 shipping points, for preparing desicated 

 vegetables for Alaska, and there is noth- 

 ing more in daily demand tban choice 

 onions. 



Onions may be grown on any clean, 

 rich soil, but that which is well drained 

 and contains a large amount of decom- 

 posed vegetable matter is the best. In 

 some sections the black, swampy muck 

 makes an excellent onion soil if drained 

 and cultivated. If an alfalfa or clover 

 field is plowed in the fall, ani stirred or 

 worked over with a disc harrow in the 

 spring it will make an ideal onion field,. 



