CHAPTER II. 



THE NEW SOIL IRRIGATION 



WE HAVE heard a great deal about "new land," and we 

 know what the expression stands for, but as a matter of 

 strict definition, there is no new land. The nearest approach 

 to it is found in connection with great engineering works and 

 in cities where, for one purpose or another, as for parks, docks 

 and kindred uses, a few acres have been filled in, and these 

 areas it were better to call "made land" than "new land." 

 There are also very considerable tracts of swamp and marsh 

 land too wet for cultivation which have been or may be ren- 

 dered available for tillage by draining away the water, but such 

 areas are "reclaimed" rather than "new," an appellation applied 

 also to desert land made cultivable by irrigation. 



What is usually termed "new land" is in fact virgin soil ; 

 soil which has never been pierced by the plow nor made to 

 bring forth a crop, and which, because its constituent elements 

 have never been drawn upon by cultivated vegetation, is found 

 to be exceptionally fertile and productive. Wherever, there- 

 fore, a land exists the surface of which is at present non- 

 productive, or but poorly so, by reason of climatic condi- 

 tions, as in the arid and semi-arid regions of this country, or 

 where, because of long-continued and unwise cultivation, or 

 for any other reason, it lacks within itself the elements of fer- 

 tility and productiveness, there, if the harmful factors are elim- 

 inated and the needful factors supplied, we shall have essen- 

 tially a new soil, with all that such a soil implies of rich re- 

 wards for the labor bestowed upon it. 



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