8 BULLETIN 211, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
Outside of the timber-covered mountains, the soils have little or 
no humus, because the conditions are unfavorable for the production - 
or decomposition of any large amount of vegetable matter. 
A characteristic feature of many of the plains is a layer of white, 
calcareous material, a few to several inches in thickness, lying a foot 
or so below the surface. This is known as caliche, or hardpan, and 
is probably a concentration of this material leached from the lower | 
soil layers by an upward movement of the soil water due = pro- 
longed surface evaporation. 
SUBDIVISIONS OF THE LAND. 
New Mexico contains a little less than 78,500,000 acres of land. 
According to the Thirteenth Census (1909 data), 11,270,021 acres, or 
14.4 per cent of the total area, were included in farms. This desig- 
nation is quite misleading, as will be seen farther on; it certainly does 
not mean that that much land is under cultivation. 
Of the above-named area, 1,467,191 acres—only 1.9 per cent of the . 
total area of the State and 13 per cent of the area reported as included 
in farms—were improved land. The same authority states that 35.9 
per cent of the farms were irrigated and that these irrigated farms con- 
tained 31.5 per cent of the improved land. Irrigation plants then in 
existence were able to water 644,970 acres, and irrigation projects 
were then completed or under way that would irrigate 1,102,291 acres. 
Newell! estimates the total water supply of the State as sufficient 
to irrigate 4,000,000 acres. The governor’s report for 1909-10? 
states that ‘‘thorough investigations which have been carried on 
during the past four years by the engineering department show con- 
clusively that we have no less than 3,000,000 acres which may be 
reclaimed by practicable diversion, storage, and pumping projects.”’ 
The area of farming land has been markedly increased within the 
past six or seven years by the introduction of the so-called dry- 
farming methods in the eastern part of the State. Some of the best 
land of northeastern Eddy and eastern Chaves Counties and con- 
siderable of that in Roosevelt, Curry, Quay, Torrance, Guadalupe, 
San Miguel, Mora, Union, and Colfax Counties has been patented, 
and some smail part of it has been improved. Estimates made by ~ 
men well acquainted with the development going on in that region | 
place the area of this land under cultivation in 1911 at 417,000 acres, 
and these estimates are believed to be conservative. The year 1912 
saw more of it in cultivation than ever before, but in 1914 the greater 
part of it was not cultivated and many of the farms were deserted. 
It is probable that this change in the method of using this land 
will ead increase the total number of stock grown in the State, 
2 Curry, Cearee! Report of the Governor of New Morice to the Secretary of the Interior. [1909}-10, Dp. 
24. Washington, 1910. 
