DRY LANDS AND FORESTS 105 



tion of the fact that the census enumerators 

 of 1910 found nearly six million acres of land 

 ditched, diked and graded, and with water 

 waiting, still unoccupied. Another explana- 

 tion of this over-development which amounted 

 to nearly thirty-three per cent, of the whole 

 lay in the fact that a large hulk of irrigable 

 land was in the hands of commercial enter- 

 prises, held at higher rates of valuation than 

 the prospective settlers were able to command. 



Between the 99th and the 104th meridians 

 lies the Great Plains area, comprising nearly 

 three hundred million acres of bench lands, 

 for the most part occupying an altitude too 

 high to be watered artificially even were there 

 water enough for the purpose. It was over 

 this region that the last tide of home-seekers 

 spread to the extent of forty million acres in 

 the ten years ending 1910. They must look 

 solely to the heavens for succor as must those in 

 the Great Basin lying in the inter-mountain 

 regions where irrigation is not feasible. 



Broadly speaking, dry-farming is confined 

 to those lands which cannot be profitably irri- 

 gated, which receive an annual rainfall of be- 

 tween ten and twenty inches. However, there 



