118 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



March 



INTRODUCING NEW PLANTS. 



David G. Fairchild, an agricultural 

 explorer and in charge of the work of 

 introduction of new seeds and plants, 

 says that the greatest surprises will 

 be in the utilization of what are now 

 considered desert lands, for the grow- 

 ing of special arid land crops requir- 

 ing but a fraction of the moisture nec- 

 essary for the growth of ordinary 

 plants such as corn and wheat. "We 

 are 'finding new plants," he said, "from 

 the far table lands of Turkestan and 

 the steppes of Russia and Siberia, 

 which grow luxuriantly under such 

 conditions of aridity that the crops 

 of the Mississippi Valley farms would 

 wither and die as though scorched by 

 a sirocco." 



MACARONI WHEAT. 



Macaroni wheat affords a good in- 

 stance of a crop which is capable of 

 revolutionizing the values of tens of 

 millions of acres of arid land 



"The macaroni wheat belt," said 

 Mark A. Carleton, cereal specialist of 

 the Bureau of Plant Industry, "ex- 

 tends, on an average, the width of the 

 United States, and from the p8th to 

 well beyond the iO2d meridian, with 

 a general yielding capacity for half 

 this vast area of 30 bushels per acre 

 and of the other half of 15 bushels." 



A MILLION SQUARE MILES. 



"It is a matter of millions of acres, 

 then, for this crop?" 



"Millions ! I should say so. The 

 macaroni wheat country would include 

 a very large fraction of a million 

 square miles. Our people are but be- 

 ginning to realize dimly the utterly 

 vast agricultural wealth which lies lat- 

 ent in this enormous area. The De- 

 partment of Agriculture is pushing 

 this desert reclamation with great vig- 

 or. No year goes by but that finds 

 some one or two or three entirely new 

 varieties or species of plants of won- 

 derful drouth resistance. Macaroni 

 wheat will grow with ten inches of 

 rainfall and yield 15 bushels to the 

 acre where ordinary wheat is an ab- 

 solute failure. This is two bushels 

 more than the average wheat yield for 



the United States. There are many 

 other crops with as great possibilities 

 and which thrive on but slight mois- 

 ture, including splendid forage plants. 

 I might mention kafir corn, the sor- 

 ghums, millets, brome grass, as well 

 as new kinds of oats and barleys of 

 wonderful drouth resisting powers, the 

 emmer or speltz, and a long line of 

 others. We are constantly finding new 

 grains and forage plants in the Cau- 

 casus, in Algeria, Turkestan and other 

 dry countries which will bring under 

 cultivation amazing areas of the Great 

 American Desert, now looked upon as 

 absolutely unfit for agriculture. It is 

 a somewhat singular thing that no men 

 are so skeptical of the reality of these 

 facts as the residents of this region, 

 but our experiments have already 

 proven what I have said to be actual 

 facts, not theories." 



A SPLENDID FORAGE CROP. 



Dr. Harvey Wiley, the Agricultural 

 Chief Chemist, says that the sorghums 

 form a very fine stock feed and that 

 their cultivation, along with the mil- 

 lets and other of the desert crops, 

 where corn is an entire failure, insures 

 a vast future development for that 

 great section. 



SCIENTIFIC CULTIVATION. 



Improved methods of culture and 

 tillage in connection with the planting 

 of these hardy drouth crops will 

 change the face of nature throughout 

 entire States. By what is known as 

 the Campbell System of Soil Culture, 

 the lands of Western Kansas, Nebras- 

 ka, Colorado, and, in fact, wherever 

 there is a deep loam but where the 

 rainfall is only 14 or 15 inches, can 

 be made to produce heavy crops of 

 grains, while forage plants and or- 

 chards and vegetables can be very suc- 

 cessfully grown. By sub-surface pack- 

 ing of the soil and continual surface 

 cultivation all of the meager rainfall 

 is conserved in the soil for plant use. 

 Professor Campbell states, and has 

 demonstrated, that by this method 

 "dry farming" can be carried "to the 

 foot of the Rockies," while the semi- 



