Campbell's 1902 Soil Culture Manual. 



99 



of air. The same condition practically is maintained when we store the 

 rain waters in the soil or waters from irrigation ditches and allow it to 

 percolate down deeply, then hold the water below by the mulch. Irriga- 

 tion scientifically applied by the Campbell method will accomplish mar- 

 velous results. 



REVIEW OF THE CAMPBELL 

 METHOD. 



Omaha, Neb., Jan. 29, 1902. 



Prof. H. W. Campbell, Holdrege, Neb. 



Dear Sir: — I take pleasure in contributing to your volume on Soil 

 Culture my sincere testimonial in behalf of the work you have done, and 

 the valuable results attained which justify the prediction that at no distant 

 period agriculture and horticulture will prosper on the great semi-arid 

 plains of the west, and millions of acres of fertile lands, lacking now noth- 

 ing but the application of your method of cultivation, will become pro- 

 ductive farms. 



Since the spring of 1898 I have taken great interest in your experi- 

 ments in the field, and visited in that year and the following year, several 

 times, your farm in Cheyenne County, Kansas, and later your Model Farm 

 in Graham County, in the same state, for the special purpose of studying 

 your soil physics, and gaining as full a comprehension of your system of 

 soil culture as possible. 



I began my observations and study at the outset with a lack of faith, 

 full of doubts and criticisms, and struggled along for some time against 

 the conversion which came later and completely removed every ground of 

 disbelief that had previously established itself in my mind. I had doubted, 

 at first, whether the texture and formation of the soils found in the dry 

 prairies were such that the upward movement of moisture from the reser- 

 voirs of water stored below the surface by your method of cultivation, 

 would be sufficiently rapid, at the critical junctures that continued drought 

 brings, to supply the field crops with the quantity of moisture absolutely 

 needed to sustain growth and carry them over an extremely dry season. 

 I am glad, however, to testify that my study and observation of the facts 

 respecting this vital question, under such circumstances and conditions, 

 both at Bird City and in Graham County, as made an extreme test of your 

 system, proved to my mind conclusively that the capillary movement is 

 ample in the severest drought, and that the only thing required is the con- 

 servation in the soil strata below of a quantity of moisture sufficient to 

 carry the crop through the drought period: and that the problem of con- 



L.ofC. 



