84 THE NEW AGRICULTURE. 



A trial area of cabbage in Michigan gave a larger number of 

 heads, with a total gain in weight of 11.325 pounds over a simi- 

 lar area similarly planted but left to be watered by the natural 

 rainfall. In New Jersey an irrigated tract gave 45 pounds of 

 beans where a similar tract of equally good ground, planted 

 and cultivated in a precisely similar manner but left without 

 the aid of irrigation, yielded only 17 pounds. Irrigated pep- 

 pers yielded 1,277 pounds ; peppers on a non-irrigated tract of 

 -the same size yielded 717 pounds. Two tracts of celery, the 

 one irrigated and the other non-irrigated, yielded, respectively, 

 329 pounds and 136 pounds. 



The examples above cited could be indefinitely extended. 

 Of course, these results were obtained in a dry season, and it 

 may be argued that such conditions do not prevail .every year, 

 but when it is remembered that drouths do frequently occur 

 it will certainly be determined that for a certain class of prod- 

 ucts at least, irrigation is a paying proposition. Still another 

 factor is the fact that different crops need different quanti- 

 ties to assure a maximum yield, whereas a natural rainfall 

 pours an equal amount upon every field in the same locality 

 without the slightest regard to the needs of the particular 

 crop. To leave these crops to the haphazards of a natural 

 rainfall is plainly, for many crops, an improvident procedure, 

 and we may look for a steady, if not a rapid, growth of the 

 practice of irrigation in the humid portions of the country, 

 particularly in the Eastern States. 



It may well be that the great staples, corn, cotton and wheat, 

 which have hitherto gotten along very well without irrigation, 

 will continue to be cultivated indefinitely without this artificial 

 aid, but in the main, extensive agriculture is to give place 



