IRRIGATION FOR THE EAST. 



The office of Experiment Stations of the U. S. Department of Ag- 

 riculture will soon issue bulletin No. 87, entitled " Irrigation in New 

 Jersey." It was prepared by Prof. E. B. Voorhees, of -the New Jersey 

 Experiment Station, and describes his experiments in irrigation for 

 the season of 1899. It is generally thought that the necessity for irri- 

 gation in the United States exists only in the region west of the Miss- 

 issippi River, but repeated crop failures in the East and successful 

 farming in the West have called attention to the importance of con- 

 trolling the moisture of soils rather than accepting the conditions as 

 they exist. Professor Voorhees estimates the loss to the hay crop of 

 New Jersey from the drouth in May and early June, 1899, at $1 ,500,000, 

 while small fruits and vegetables were even more seriously affected 

 than the grasses. The records kept by him at the experiment station 

 show that in 1897 and 1898, years of abundant rainfall in April and 

 May, the yield of hay averaged 2.65 tons per acre. In 1899 it was but 

 a fraction over 1 ton, owing to the deficiency of rainfall in April and 

 May, at the low price of 10 a ton, a loss for the 25 acres of over $400. 

 The yield of crimson clover forage for 1897 and 1898 was 8.5 tons per 

 acre; in 1899 the yield was but 5 tons, or in a good year the yield was 

 70 per cent greater. The deficiency in the rainfall at the critical 

 period was alone responsible for this difference in yield. Oat and pea 

 forage in 1897 and the early seeding of 1898 averaged 6 tons per acre; 

 in 1899 the yield was but 3.3 tons per acre. 



To show the frequency of such drouths as that of 1899, the bulle- 

 tin cites the rainfall records of Philadelphia: "The rainfall records 

 in Philadelphia from 1825 to 1895 (seventy years) show that in 88 per 

 cent of the year there was a deficiency of over one inch for one month, 

 or that in 62 years out of the 70 there was one month in the growing 

 season from April to August in which such a marked deficiency oc- 

 curred as to cause a serious shortage of crop, and that for the same 

 period there were 39 years in which the deficiency extended through- 

 out two months, while in 21 years it extended throughout three month, 

 or in 30 per cent of the years included in this record there were three 

 months during the growing period in which the average rainfall was 

 deficient one inch or more. It was thus observed that a wide series 

 of crops would be likely to suffer in more than one-half of the years 

 for which the record is available, while a still larger number would 

 suffer in nearly one-third of the years, for it must be remembered that 

 even a slight deficiency in one month may result in serious reduction 



