MANAGEMENT OF SPECIAL SOILS 289 



Cold Soils 



The practice of agriculture in warm climates is based 

 on the experience of four thousand years or more. Like- 

 wise the practices of crop growing under irrigation have 

 developed through an equally long time. Even modern 

 dry farming practices are based upon the experiences 

 of more than a generation. But the growing of crops 

 in climates as far north as the northern settlements of 

 Western Canada and Europe is a comparatively recent 

 movement, and it enjoys neither the accumulated ex- 

 perience of years nor the benefit of such searching 

 scientific investigations as has the agriculture of other 

 climatic zones. 



When the amount or the condition of the plant food in 

 soil limits the yield, as in most warm humid areas, 

 methods for permanently maintaining or increasing the 

 yields are known. Similarly on dry lands where water 

 limits the yield the science of dry farming has been 

 quite thoroughly worked out. But in northern regions 

 and in high altitudes where the growing season is short 

 tod where low temperatures limit the yield there is 

 little to be learned from the investigations of science and 

 still less from the practices of older agricultural 

 countries. This means that successful methods have yet 

 very largely to be worked out for the crop grower along 

 the northern edges of settlement. 



239C. Some Practices of Northern Agriculture. — 

 At the present time some of the chief practices being 

 followed where low temperatures limit the yield are as 

 follows : 



(1) Ranching, which permits of the extensive use of 

 the native vegetation and such frost-resistant crops as 

 our hardy perennial grasses ; 



