344 



THE IBKIGATION AGE. 



Where drains are laid in wet land its unstable 

 condition and water-bearing sand pockets often make 

 it impracticable to use short tiles unless laid upon a 

 broad base. Sewer pipes known as "seconds" may 

 sometimes be used in place of drain tiles with better 

 success because of their greater length and the addi- 

 tion of sockets which aid in holding them in align- 

 ment. 



The plans of treating land for the purpose of re- 

 deeming it from alkali which has accumulated through 

 evaporation and seepage are not uniform, nor is there 

 sny practice which has been so reduced to a system 

 as to justify an authoritative statement of methods that 

 may be best employed. The cutting off of the under- 

 ground supply by drainage has often resulted in the 

 full reclamation of the land, with no other treatment 

 than subsequent irrigation and cropping. In other 

 instances more complete underdrainage and special irri- 

 gation with cultivation for two or more years has been 

 found necessary. 



The experience of R. P. Tjossem, of Ellensburg, 

 Wash., in reclaiming alkali land proves that it can be 

 done by underdrainage and subsequent irrigation. He 

 has tried mole drains and box drains 2\2y 2 feet deep, 

 also box drains four and a half feet deep. His drain- 

 ing was not done systematically, but experimentally, 

 and was continued over a field of seventy-two acres in a 

 random way. He discarded the shallow system of 

 draining early in the work and adopted four and a 

 half feet as the minimum depth at which drains should 

 be placed. He is now of the opinion that five feet 

 is preferable. He irrigated liberally, and by sub- 

 soiling turned the surface soil down as deeply as pos- 

 sible and irrigated again. The land was seeded as rap- 

 idly as possible, the completeness of the reclamation 

 being indicated by the growth of the crops planted. 

 Some parts of the field were soon producing a paying 

 crop, while others were more stubborn and required 

 further irrigation and cultivation. At the end of five 

 years the entire tract produced a profitable crop of 

 alfalfa and timothy. In the sixth year only small 

 spots remained which failed to produce a good average 

 crop of grass. This field at the beginning was badly 

 affected with alkali, and is described as absolutely bar- 

 ren, black alkali being prominent among the salts. 

 The drainage was meager and experimental. The field 

 is now pointed to by neighboring farmers as an ex- 

 ample of the successful reclamation of alkali land by 

 underdrainage. The cheapest and most effective meth- 

 ods and the details which practical farmers desire to 

 know are not as fully demonstrated as they will un- 

 doubtedly he later on. 



Attention was called to this land and the method 

 of its reclamation in Bulletin 49 of the Washington 

 State Experiment Station, issued in 1901, in which is 

 described quite fully the nature of the soil and the per- 

 centage of alkali it then contained. The fact that, in 

 1903, $1,500 worth of hay was harvested and sold from 

 this field, while the land adjoining it remains highly 

 charged with alkali and produces only salt grass, proves 

 in a most positive way the value of drainage as a 

 factor in reclaiming alkali land. A calcareous hardpan 

 is found over a considerable portion of land in that 

 locality. When it is encountered it costs 75 or 80 cents 

 a rod to dig a ditch five feet deep by hand labor. 

 Where this does not exist 50 cents a rod is a fair esti- 

 mate of cost. 



THE GOVERNMENT FORESTRY EXHIBIT. 



WHAT IT COMPRISES AND HOW IT IS ARRANGED AT 

 THE ST. LOUIS FAIR. 



Both Indoor and Outdoor Features Described. Large Collection of 



Transparencies Illustrating Forests and Forest Work in the 



United States. Timber Tests, Wood Preservation and 



Methods of Turpentine Orcharding Special Features. 



The Bureau of Forestry of the United States De- 

 partment of Agriculture has prepared for the Louisiana 

 Purchase Exposition the most extensive display it has 

 ever made. The purpose is both to illustrate the work 

 which the Bureau is doing and to show actual forest con- 

 ditions in all parts of the country. The visitor will 

 see there the most impressive evidence of what practical 

 forestry is, and also its great present and future im- 

 portance as a means of promoting the national welfare. 

 Lumbering ranks fourth among the industries of the 

 country, and it is a matter of hopeful promise for the 

 permanence of the industry and for the cause of forestry 

 that lumbermen are adopting conservative forest man- 

 agement in their lumber operations. That agriculture, 

 incomparably the most important of our national 

 sources of wealth, also depends in no small degree on 

 forestry, is not, however, so well understood. Under 

 intensive methods of farming, and with the enlargement 

 of the cultivable area made possible by irrigation, this 

 dependence will become increasingly close. Mining and 

 grazing, too, materially depend on forestry, for mines 

 demand cheap and abundant timber, and the forage 

 which feeds most of the western stock is one of the 

 important indirect products which, under proper re- 

 strictions, the forest may be made to yield. All of these 

 relationships are strikingly displayed in the Forestry 

 exhibit at St. Louis. 



The space allotted to the Bureau of Forestry is in 

 two different though not widely separated parts of the 

 Fair grounds. An indoor exhibit is located in the For- 

 estry, Fish and Game Building, in which is centered also 

 an exhibition of the lumber industry of the United 

 States. A striking and complete collection of photo- 

 graphic transparencies illustrate forest conditions and 

 problems as they are encountered by the Bureau. Typical 

 single trees and forests, the cutting or harvesting of 

 forests and their renewal by natural reproduction, forest 

 planting in treeless regions or where forests have been 

 destroyed, and damage by fire, insects, over-grazing, etc., 

 are shown most clearly. Nearly all of the transparencies 

 are of large size, some of them four by five feet. They 

 are arranged to be seen from the inside of an arcade 

 illuminated by natural light, with eastern and western 

 forest scenes shown on opposite walls. This series is 

 supplemented by a collection of large colored bromide 

 photographs framed in the panels of the balustrade 

 which surrounds the exhibit space. On the floor be- 

 tween the balustrade and the arcade are cases which 

 display some specially important phases of the Bureau's 

 investigations, together with a collection of all the in- 

 struments used in forest work, the publications of the 

 Bureau, etc. Of particular interest is a large case con- 

 ctaining longleaf pine trunks which show the advan- 

 tages of the new system of turpentining promoted by 

 the Bureau and the disadvantages and injurious effects 

 of the old system of boxing. Two other cases exhibit 



