310 RURAL CALIFORNIA 



farmers of the inter-mountain states and which are 

 sometimes claimed to be their more recent discov- 

 eries. Seventy years ago California began to have 

 "non-irrigators," who made a virtue of their creed 

 and their practice, and though they often claimed 

 too much relatively, they did demonstrate the feasi- 

 bility of dry-farming by tillage for grain and for- 

 age crops, winter truck farms, summer crops of 

 beans, tomatoes, and the like, and the greater areas 

 of orchard and vineyard, except of citrus fruits and 

 raisins, were made productive by dry-farming with 

 an average rainfall of 15 to 18 inches, taking the 

 whole area together. This was the earliest large- 

 scale demonstration of the efficacy of tillage to ren- 

 der a small rainfall sufficient to produce a valuable 

 crop of some kind. 



The Americans demonstrated that the supreme 

 efficacy of tillage in moisture conservation is to be 

 realized on irrigated areas and not on dry lands, and 

 that tillage as a substitute for irrigation was an 

 incidental, though immensely valuable., suggestion 

 from experience in irrigation. The mission farm- 

 ers knew no tillage except the opening of the soil 

 in the first instance to receive the seed or cutting of 

 a fruit-tree or vine. When it began to grow, water 

 was run over the surface. When the surface dried 

 and cracked more water was run over it. When the 

 surface soil became a solid mass of root-fibers drawn 

 up in the almost vain attempt to secure the water 

 that rippled over the surface, which they had ren- 

 dered almost impervious, these masses were hewn out 



