THE ADVANTAGES OF IRRIGATION. 1 5 



drouth, he has no rainfall to interrupt his labors or to 

 injure his growing or harvested crops. And happier 

 still may he be when he realizes that he need have no 

 ' ' off years, ' ' and he knows that the waters he admits 

 to his fields at will are freighted with rich fertilizing 

 elements usually far more valuable to the growing 

 crop than any that he can purchase and apply at a 

 costly rate — a cost that makes serious inroads upon the 

 profits of the majority of farmers cultivating the worn- 

 out or deteriorated soils in the older states year by 

 year. Fertilizers are already needed for the most 

 profitable culture on many farms in Iowa, Minnesota, 

 Eastern Kansas, and Nebraska, in Missouri, and in all 

 states east of those named. 



In proof of this assertion the writer can best be 

 qualified in his statement by mentioning the fa(5l that 

 there is an oat field in Saguache county, ^Colorado, that 

 up to 1894 had produced twenty- three consecutive 

 crops, each of which averaged forty bushels to the 

 acre through all the years. The yield of the twenty- 

 third crop averaged sixty bushels, which would indi- 

 cate that the fertility of that field was keeping up 

 remarkably well without rest or rotation. This unusual 

 result was made possible by means of irrigation alone, 

 and there is no doubt much truth in the theory that 

 the irrigating waters from the mountains contain great 

 quantities of mineral fertilizing elements in solution. 

 Even by shallow plowing and the most shiftless 

 methods of land preparation a Mexican farmer named 

 E. Valdez, of Chromo, Colorado, produced twenty-five 

 consecutive crops of wheat on the same soil, and with- 

 out manure or change of seed in the interim. This 



