402 Inland Water Culture 



WHAT SHALL BE DONE WITH THE MARSHES? 



There are millions of acres of waste wet lands in 

 America, that are producing little or nothing of value. 

 That this land will yet be made to contribute much 

 more largely to human sustenance, there can be no 

 doubt : for, 



1. It is the richest of all the land, in foodstuffs that 

 make for soil fertility. It contains organic remains 

 accumulated for ages, together with the wash from 

 surrounding slopes. 



2. It is generally the best located of all the land 

 with respect to transportation facilities. Inland 

 marshes almost everywhere are traversed by railways, 

 their levels having invited the attention of the route- 

 locating engineer; many marshes border on navigable 

 waterways. 



3. It is the last of the land available for occupation, 

 and with our population quadrupling every century, 

 the pressure for room is becoming ever more intense. 



While it is inevitable that most of this land will yet 

 be used for production of human food, it is by no means 

 certain how this may best be done. Drainage is the 

 one method hitherto tried, but drainage has its serious 

 limitations : 



1. Much of the wet land cannot be profitably 

 drained. 



2. Its value as a water reservoir is largely destroyed 

 by drainage. 



There is another plan for making marshes productive 

 that has not yet been tried on any adequate scale — a 

 plan that involves water culture as well as agriculture. 

 The marshes — now neither wet nor dry — cannot be 

 used as they are; but if by a shifting of some of their 

 topsoil they be made in part into permanently dry, 

 and in part into deeper reservoirs of water, they might 



