275 



"Once let the northern Illinois farmer understand that, under 

 normal conditions, these vapor laden air currents from the south 

 spill out their moisture in local or general showers many times 

 along their route, passing onward to recoup their water by 

 evaporation from the earth along their pathway, and that under 

 the old conditions of marsh and wet lands they found plenty of 

 it; but now, when thousands of square miles of these same lands 

 have been ditched and drained with tile, the air goes on hungry 

 and impoverished for lack of vapor and with no promise of 

 refreshing showers for the waiting lands along its course. When 

 he realizes this fact he may be led to see that perhaps it would 

 be good policy for the state to own and control those waste 

 places and keep them as such for the general good. And, per- 

 haps, seeing this, he might be willing that the grand state of 

 Illinois should take some steps to act in concert with other states 

 in an attempt to mitigate the hot dry winds from the west by 

 pouring into them moisture through the agency of belts of tim- 

 ber trees, even if the state did have to spend some money to 

 keep the trees alive by boring a few artesian wells. 



WILL IT PAY TO COOK FOOD FOR CATTLE. 



This, according to the experiments of Prof. Stewart, depends 

 upon the number to be fed. He says, as the result of his ex- 

 periments, that he believes in it. He took twenty steers, placing 

 half of them on one side of the barn and the rest on the other. 

 To one lot he fed three bushels of corn meal per day and dry 

 hay. To the others he gave one and a half bushels of meal, 

 which was mixed with six bushels of cut hay, and the whole 

 cooked until it was soft. He continued feeding in this way for 

 three months, and found that the lot of steers fed on cooked 

 food gained as well as the others, and when all were killed the 

 butcher said that the meat of those fed on cooked food was 

 better than that of the others. According to this experiment, 

 there was a saving of one-half in the meal used. Prof. Stewart 

 says that he has never found a gain of less than thirty per cent, 

 in his experiments with all kinds of stock. A ration made up 



