HISTORY ‘OF THE FIRST YEAR’S WORK. ie 
fall was 3.44 inches, the heat continued excessive, reaching as high 
as 100°. There was but a trace of rain during October, and the mer- 
cury remained up in the nineties, and went up to 94°. In November 
less than 1 inch of rain fell, and during the next three months there 
was not enough to mater ially raise the average for the twelve months, 
the precipitation during December being 2.14 inches, only 0.51 inch 
during January, 1899, and only 0.01 inch during February following. 
The oldest settlers of central Texas still talk feelingly of the memora- 
ble drought year of 1887, but it is a fact that there was even less rain- 
fall in 1898 than in 1887. Early in the spring cattle had been placed 
- in the station pastures, and as long as the stock water lasted the plans 
for handling them, as set out above, were carefully followed, but 
from time to time the water supply gave out between rains, and the 
cattle had to be taken to other pastures in which there were streams of 
running water. By the end of November the effort to hold them even 
temporarily in any of the station pastures was abandoned. 
When the garden tract (10 acres) had been planted, as stated, its 
only fence was 5 strings of barbed wire. Soon after the alfalfa, cow- 
peas, and teosinte began to grow the prairie dogs and jack rabbits 
from every point of the station and from the outside moved en masse 
to them, destroyed nearly all the alfalfa roots, and did considerable 
damage to the velvet-bean and cowpea vines and the teosinte. Enough 
seed of the cowpeas was saved for another year’s trial. The velvet 
beans, in spite of the long-protracted hot weather and the short rain- 
fall, made a surprising vine growth, but they bloomed and the abun- 
dant crop of pods formed too late to mature a crop of beans before the 
frosts of October, which were much earlier than usual for that section. 
The teosinte made a vigorous growth of 18 to 32 inches, when the 
drought began and the growth stopped, the roots being too far gone 
to do well when the fall rains set in. The roots survived the drought 
and the shoots made some growth until frost, but no seed matured. 
As a result of these several garden experiments a report was made 
to the Agrostologist under date of November 24, 1898, in which it was 
suggested that with normal amount of rain during the next year it 
would be practicable to demonstrate: (1) That alfalfa of all kinds could 
be grown successfully without irrigation in central Texas; (2) that 
teosinte would prove a splendid forage plant for the section—in fact, 
superior for forage purposes to any of the sorghums as tested to date; 
(3) that the velvet bean would prove a crop of much value; (4) that all 
of the several varieties of cowpeas, which had been experimented with 
to date, would be shown to be available crops for forage purposes; (5) 
that practically no definite results had been secured so far as the grass 
seeds sown were concerned, only a few of the varieties having germi- 
nated, none of them having developed satisfactorily on account of the 
drought. It was also suggested that the work had given suflicient 
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