94 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



restaurants it is commonly sold under the 

 name of "rice-bird," even at times of the 

 year when there are no rice-birds in the 

 country. Nobody need have any scruples 

 about killing, and eating if he wants, as 

 many English sparrows as possible. 



If the Department of Agriculture could 

 only arrange to cross the English sparrow 

 with some bird of brilliant plumage so that 

 all sparrows would have beautiful red or 

 blue wings or tails then there would be 

 some prospect for their depletion of their 

 numbers since American women will wear 

 birds and bird* feathers on their hats. 

 This would be doing the farmer more ser- 

 vice than all the gseat work of free seed 

 distribution which Congress forces the 

 Secretary of Agriculture to carry out, each 

 year. 



SEED DISTRIBUTION. 



Frederick V. Coville, the Botanist of 

 the Department of Agriculture has a well 

 thought-out plan in hand whereby the free- 

 for-all-seed distribution now operated in 

 the interests of ''close Congressional dis- 

 tricts" can be gradually transformed into a 

 system of seed collection and distribution 

 under which the original intention of the 

 Department can be carried out, and new 

 and presumably valuable seeds distributed 

 to the proper localities throughout the 

 country and experimented with, tn other 

 words Mr. Coville thinks it is possible to 

 substitute a rational seed distribution for 

 one which is, to say the least, almost use- 

 less from an agricultural point of view. 



"There has been set aside," said Mr. 

 Coville, "from the Congressional seed dis- 

 tribution appropriation, a special fund 

 which the Department of Agriculture now 

 devoting to a systematic prosecution of 

 plant introduction work. Within the past 

 three years new plants have been imported 

 which are capable to adding enormously to 

 the agricultural products of the country." 

 He cited the introduction of Kiushu rice 

 brought from Japan two years ago by one 



of the Department's agricultural explorers 

 Dr. Knapp, as a means of saving the 

 Louisana rice-planters a million and a h alf 

 dollars a year. Mr. Coville also called at- 

 tention to the introduction of Kafir corn, 

 Turkey wheat, Turkestan alfalfa and the 

 date palm, with which the Agricultural 

 Department had more or less to do. 



He said: "About in 1888 Kansas began, 

 the cultivation of a cereal and forage plant 

 from Egypt and India known as Kafir 

 corn. In 1893 the value of the Kansas 

 crop was $653,000; in 1896, $3,599,000; in 

 1897, $4,375,000; and in 1898, $5,842,000. 

 The Turkey wheat now so extensively 

 grown in the Great Plains is an immigrant 

 from Russia. The cold-resistant variety 

 of alfalfa recently introduced from Turk- 

 estan by the Department of Agriculture 

 promises to effect an important extension 

 in the cultivation of this crop into the 

 higher and more northern plains. The 

 date palm has not been successfully intro- 

 duced into southern Arizona and extensive 

 experiments under the auspices of the 

 Government are underway." 



SUGAR BEET EXPERIMENTS IN 

 INDIANA. 



For the past thirteen years the Indiana 

 Agricultural Experiment Station has been 

 conducting experiments on sugar beets in 

 Indiana. The main purpose of this work 

 has been to determine whether or not 

 sugar beets might be profitably grown in 

 this state, for sugar producing purposes. 



This work has been conducted year after 

 year with much care, and every opportun- 

 ity has been made use of to ascertain Indi- 

 ana's adaptability as a state to produce 

 sugar from the beet. For years the sta- 

 tion has distributed free seed each spring 

 to hundreds of farmers over the state, who 

 agreed to follow the directions given 

 them, to plant the seed, grow the crop and 

 send the station samples of the beets in 

 the fall. Thousands of pounds of beet 

 seed have thus been distributed, and each 



