THE BEE-KEErK:;S' REVIEW. 



25 



of the great West, pirticularly of the 

 mountainous States. All that is needed 

 to make the West bloom as the rose, is 

 irrigation; and National attention is now- 

 being turned in that direction. We of 

 the East may as well wake up to 

 the fact that the West is about take great 

 strides, and to become a great producing 

 counlrc. One great physical feature of 

 the West that has delayed its production 

 of cultivated crops, is its mountainous 

 character, which has made deserts of its 

 plains. ^lan is now touching these 

 plains with his magic wand, the irrigation 

 ditch, and they are producing crops two- 

 three- and fourfold. I'pon this point 

 Bro. Root of Gleanings has written in a 

 manner so graphic that it comes pretty 

 close to being eloquent. He says: — 



These great excrescences of rock and 

 earth that tower thousands of feet into 

 the skies, standing, as it would seem, in 

 some cases as impassible barriers to the 

 vanguard of civilization, barren and bleak, 

 wild and dangerous from their rocky 

 precipices, are in reality Godsends to that 

 same civilization. What would the great 

 deserts of the West do without irrigation? 

 and how could there be irrigation unless 

 there were millions of tons of snow and 

 ice stored on top of those lofty peaks? 

 The water from wells in those regions is 

 generally brackish, and unfit for any pur- 

 pose; l)Ut melted snow, right from the very 

 heavens — what could be better for Uian or 

 beast? A barren plain remote from the 

 mountains will protjably always be a 

 desert; but some of the most arid portions 

 of our country, within one or two hundred 

 miles of those "impassible barriers," have 

 been reclaimed, and there are millions of 

 acres more just like those that will be 

 made wonderfully productive as fast as 

 civilization pushes onward. 



In some cases I found that triple use is 

 made of this snow. Staiuling thousands 

 of feet up in the air on the plateaus, or in 

 the canyons of the mountains, it melts and 

 runs into reservoirs, natural or artificial. 

 It is then conveyerl by an enormous flume 

 down to some power-house that may utilize 

 anysvhere from five to ten thousand hor.se 

 power. This water is made to drive im- 

 mense turbines, and these in turn furnish 

 whole cities with power and light; and 

 all this comes from the mere force of 

 gravity, .\fter the water has subserved 

 Its purpose in making electricity it is then 



diverted into the cit)- mains to supply the 

 city with water; and what is left — and 

 that cor.stitutes bv far the greater portion 

 of it, is used for irrigation. 



There is any quantity of melting snow 

 now going to waste that might he similarly 

 u.sed. It only awaits the progress of Young 

 America to dam it up and run it into the 

 valleys. If I ever felt like .'leconding 

 Horace Greeley's injunction to "go west, 

 young man," I do nnw since I have seen 

 the great possibilities of the West. 

 "But, "you say, "what has all of this to 

 do with bee-keeping? Mountains mean 

 snow; snow means water; water, irriga- 

 tion; irrigation, alfalfa; alfalfa, honey. 



I used to wonder, when I was a small 

 boj', why God, when he made this earth, 

 did not make it perfectly level; and espe- 

 ciallv was the conviction forced on me 

 when riditig a bicycle in later years. 

 But suppose he had made it level — what 

 then? Saying nothing about the mineral 

 wealth, possibly half of this land of ours 

 would be an irreclaimable desert, and the 

 same would be true or other parts of the 

 world. But we of the East, with our rain- 

 falls, often pity those who have to depend 

 on irrigation. I^ast year when there was 

 such a drouth in Kansas, Nebra'^ka, and 

 Iowa, the people in California, Colorado, 

 Arizona, and in all irrigated regions, were 

 fairh- laughing in their sleeves. Said 

 they, "This great drought will make 

 honey scarce; we fear no drought, because 

 we can always have water. When there 

 is a heav}' drought in the East, there will 

 be a scant supplv of honey in New York 

 and Chicago. But we who have plenty 

 of water on tap, and can make the ground 

 moist or dry, just as 7ve want it, we will 

 go in. produce the honey, and rake in 

 the shekels;''' and they have. 



-At another time I will have something 

 to say about how those Western people 

 actually make xcater run up hill. No, 

 they do not overcome the law of gravity, 

 but in efiFect they cause the water to flow 

 over the entire land, on the hills and in 

 the valleys, everywhere, without pumps 

 or engines. 



THE YOUTHS COMPAMON IX i()(.2. 



To condense in a parajiraph the announcement 

 of The Yoi-tii's Companion for 1902 is not easy. 

 Not only will nearly two hundred story-wri ers 

 contribute tfi the paper, but n any of the most 

 eminent of living statesmen, jurists, men of 

 science and of letters, scholars, soldiers and trav- 

 ellers, including three members of the Presi- 

 dent's Cabinet. 



Iti a delightful series of articles on militars- and 

 naval topics the Secretary of the Navy will tell 

 "How Jack Lives;" Julian Ralph, the famous 

 war correspondent, will describe "How Men 

 Feel in Battle," and Winston Spencer Churchill, 



