738 
THE RURAL, NEW-YORKER 
June 2:), 
many changes were made after installation. The big 
Niquette 'well, about the same depth and equipment, 
at McCue, near Scott City, cost $3,200 complete. 
Each of these wells will irrigate a half section. If 
this proves correct then, the famers say, it will cost 
only $10 an acre for a permanent water right, owned 
and controlled by the individual. If they—the far¬ 
mers -who may not care to invest so much money—• 
will co-operate with those that have the big wells, 
and they are doing it now, the question of crops 
every year may be solved. One thing is certain: 
If you put enough water on Kansas soil, at the right 
time, you can raise anything, from trouble to a mort¬ 
gage. Certainly you can spend $10 an acre for a 
water right and make a profit, with good farming. 
A man in Gove county irrigated a half acre, last 
season, in the time of protracted drought, with water 
from a small well, raised by a windmill. He sup¬ 
plied his family table from this half acre and sold 
this: Vegetables, $20; cucumber pickles in brine, 
$12; onions, $4; potatoes, $45; pumpkins, $4; sweet 
potatoes, $2; total, $87. 
SOME BIG WELLS.—Lough’s was the only big 
well in commission during last season’s crop time. 
It was equipped then to irrigate 180 acres, all the 
owner could get ready for planting, but it will water 
320 acres he says. On the 180 acres Mr. Lough pro¬ 
duced many kinds of vegetables and grains and 
forage. The milo yield went up to 70 bushels an acre 
and oats and barley to 50 and 60 bushels. Sorghum 
grew 10 feet high. This was planted June 1, irri¬ 
gated three times, and cultivated. Four cuttings of 
Alfalfa were taken from a 31-acre field sown in 1910, 
with an average of a ton to the acre at every cutting. 
I't wouldn’t take much of this to pay for the pumping 
plant, and it wouldn’t take a water-buyer long to pay 
his bills. The well on Mr. Lough's place passes 
through 70 feet of water-bearing gravel, without a 
layer of any other material intervening. This makes 
it 60 feet of water. Of course the water lowers when 
the engine is pumping. It goes down to 75 feet from 
the discharge, the extreme distance the water is lifted. 
No amount of pumping lowers it beyond that point. 
A centrifugal pump and a 60-horse power fuel-oil 
engine are used. This lifts 1,600 gallons a minute. 
The water is carried into ditches by direct gravity 
from the well to the land. No reservoir is used. It 
cost 50 cents an acre, at every irrigation, to put water 
on the land last Summer. About 100 gallons of oil 
is required every fifteen hours, at 2R> cents a gallon, 
freight paid, delivered at Scott' City. Nine and one- 
quarter inch pipe is used in drawing this water. 
THE SMALL FARMER.—A two-acre place at the 
edge of Garden City, owned by P. Finello, has proved 
the wonderful difference water makes. When Finello 
bought the ground it was a desert. Now it is a little 
garden spot. It was only nine feet to water when he 
installed a 7-horse power pumping plant, in the Spring 
of 1908, with a centrifugal pump and accessories. 
This cost him $293. He made his well 46 feet deep, 
to get down to steady supplies, and put in a 16-inch 
pipe. The pump draws 265 gallons a minute without 
making any perceptible change in the stage. This 
costs seven cents an hour, and it takes six hours to 
irrigate the two acres. Mr. Finello set out his first 
trees in 1908. Now he has 80 each of cherry, peach 
and plum, and 1,500 grapevines. Between the trees 
he produces enough vegetables of many kinds to give 
him a living. But for that matter, anyone who 
understands his business, with plenty of water, can 
make a good living on two or three acres with inten¬ 
sive methods. It is done in France and Holland and 
Germany. Why not in Kansas? 
WHAT IT MEANS.—The cost of drilling has 
operated against the adopting of underflow wells by 
all farmers. Of course many buy the water, but if 
pipe were not so expensive, so completely controlled 
by those who know best how to keep the price up, 
there doubtless would be two wells in Western Kan¬ 
sas where now there is one. At present the pipe prices 
are almost prohibitive, notwithstanding the govern¬ 
ment’s investigation of the trust which handles a large 
part of the business. The labor charge for drilling 
also is high. In fact it costs about as much to drill 
a water well as it would cost to drill one for gas or 
oil. Still, the water is there and the crops are about 
as certain as anything in the world when once it has 
been obtained. Anyone who has known Western 
Kansas since its buffalo and Indian days must feel a 
sense of relief in contemplating the change that has 
come over the country since the underflow water 
was discovered. Land that used to be as dry as 
some chapel addresses now blossoms in a way that 
makes the roses blush. Think, for instance, of a 
well, near Garden City, 336 feet deep! Think of it 
gushing from two to three thousand gallons of water 
a minute! That is what B. N. McCue has on his 
farm. I saw another well, eight miles from the town, 
only 68 feet deep and giving 1,500 gallons a minute. 
This farmer need never worry again. The well-dig¬ 
ging activity has spread over Stevens, Grant, Gray, 
Morton, Meade, Ford, Finney, Kearney. In some 
places, notably in Morton and Ford counties, artesian 
wells have been opened. One of these, at Richfield, 
has a natural flow of 600 gallons a minute. Of course 
anyone would prefer to have an artesian well, but no 
A BROODER IN DOGSKIN. Fig. 288. 
one, in these high-pressure days, has time to hunt for 
one. An ordinary well, supplied by the Arkansas 
underflow, will do. This underflow, the geologists 
say, is a sheet of water reaching from within ten feet 
of the surface at a depth of 75 to 100 feet, ordinarily, 
a hundred miles wide and four hundred miles long 
—the contribution of the snows and rains, perhaps, 
of the Rockies, perhaps of a region farther north. 
No indication of a decrease has been seen in five 
years, and this fact, posssibly, had much to do with 
the sudden determination to use what the Creator had 
provided. Of course there is some waste. That has 
always been the case where there are natural gas 
wells, artesian wells or oil wells. On land owned by 
J. V. Carter, near Holcomb, Finney county, I counted 
twelve wells used in irrigating several hundred acres 
of sugar beets, and every well seemed to be going at 
the same speed and producing the same quantity. At 
Ingalls, in Gray county, one firm has put in an 80- 
horse-power engine, a pump weighing 1,400 pounds, a 
suction opening of 46 inches and a 30-inch discharge 
that will pump 25,000 gallons a minute. Gray county 
probably is in about the middle of the catch-basin. 
If the underflow can stand development like this it 
ought to stand anything. It certainly looks good to 
an outsider. It may mean the final salvation of a 
land that was intended for homes and schools and 
TOMATO GRAFTED ON POTATO, Fig. 289. 
churches. But, even if it meant only water enough 
•to grow forage enough to feed cows enough to sup¬ 
port these homes and churches and schools, wouldn't 
that be fine for Western Kansas? Charles dillox. 
A block of property formerly occupied by car barns, 
lying between Thirty-second and Thirty-third streets, 
Fourth and Lexington avenues, New York, was recently 
sold for about $1,750,000. Its area was 425 by 187.G feet. 
ODD HEN MOTHERS. 
There have been some curious statements about 
methods of heating and brooding chicks. We have 
read of a woman who had a sick husband. She 
packed eggs around him and, so the story goes, actu¬ 
ally hatched some of them in this human incubator. 
We have heard of cats brooding little chicks—now it 
is a dog, as mentioned in the following note: 
"Snooze is the name of the dog shown in Figure 
287; he developed a penchant for minding chicks 
when he was six months old, since when he has faith¬ 
fully watched over several broods without ever harm¬ 
ing one of them. On one occasion when a neighbor’s 
dog picked up a chick and scampered away with it. 
Snooze chased him and made him drop it and brought 
it back to its habitation. Snooze is owned by Mrs. 
Claude Reber, of Illinois.” j. l. graff. 
GRAFTING TOMATO ON POTATO. 
My potatoes are coming up nicely now and I have a lot 
of tomato plants all sizes pretty near. Will you give me 
all .particulars how to graft a tomato on a potato as 
spoken of in your paper last Winter? a. g. 
Kirkwood, N. Y. 
Various methods are employed in grafting her¬ 
baceous plants including the cleft, splice and saddle 
grafts. The latter method is the one generally em¬ 
ployed, and is as satisfactory as any. In grafting 
the tomato upon the potato, the work can be most 
successfully and conveniently done if the potatoes are 
planted in pots. Only one stalk should be allowed to 
grow, and this may be grafted as soon as it is four 
to six inches high. Either tips of branches or a sec¬ 
tion of a branch of tomato may be used as scions, the 
tips being generally preferred. If the tomato plants 
from which the scions are to be cut are kept growing 
slowly, and are in a somewhat hardened condition 
the grafting is likely to be more successful than if 
the plants are succulent and growing rapidly. 
To make the graft, take a sharp, thin-bladed knife 
and cut the potato stalk wedge-shaped about two to 
three inches above the soil. Then take a tip from 
a tomato stem about three to four inches in length, 
and cut out a wedge-shaped section, so that the scion 
will fit down over the wedge-shaped tip of the stalk 
of the potato, as you have prepared it. The cuts to 
form the wedge-shape of the stock, should be at least 
an inch in length, and as uniform as possible, with the 
scion cut to correspond. After the stock and scion 
have been properly prepared, fit the two together 
and bind them firmly with moistened raffia, which 
should be wound about the graft in such a manner 
as to cover all the exposed cut surfaces. 
In the illustration, Fig. 289, a section of a potato stem 
is showm at the left with the tip cut into a wedge-shape; 
in the center is the tomato scion, with the end cut 
to fit over the stock, while at the right, the scion 
and stock have been placed together and wrapped 
with raffia. A somewhat longer scion is shown in 
the illustration than is necessary, but if a very short 
tip of a tomato plant is used, the stem is rather small 
for grafting unless the plant has been grown quite 
slowly, which is, however, desirable. After the graft 
has been made, the plant should be covered with a 
glass jar or put into a closed glass frame. Other¬ 
wise, the scion will dry out and wilt, and the graft be 
unsuccessful. It will be necessary to keep the plant 
confined under the jar or in the case until the scion 
makes a little growth, indicating that it has united 
with the potato stock, and it is best to first expose 
the grafted plant to the circulation of the air during 
cloudy or rainy weather, if possible. After the scion 
unites with the stock, the growth is quite rapid and 
the graft should be watched and the raffia removed 
before it begins to cut into the stem. If the grafted 
plants are placed out in the field, it will be necessary 
to stake them; otherwise, the wind is likely to break 
off the plants at the graft and thus destroy them. 
New Jersey Station. m. a. blake. 
The Department of Agriculture enumerates 300 va¬ 
rieties of dent corn, 70 of ilint, and 60 of sweet corn. 
PARIS collected $11,341,159 for tax ownership in muni¬ 
cipal amusements! In some of our American cities mil¬ 
lions are taken from the people at these “amusement" 
places—and sent right out of the communitv. 
Barley is a good Fall grain to make hay—in the North¬ 
ern States. You can sow barley and rye together in 
August. With a good Fall the barley will give hay in 
October while the rye will grow on and appear next Spring 
According to the Bureau of Statistics, the total value 
of goatskins imported into the United States during the 
current fiscal year will amount to $24,000,000. During the 
last decade we have sent $250,000,000 out of the country 
for goatskins. Why not more home-grown goatskins? 
Be sure to understand that little article on spraying 
to kill weeds. You see the sprays will kill the broad 
leaved plants and do little injury to those with narrow 
leaves. Thus spraying mustard in potatoes would injure 
both while when in oats the latter would he left unin¬ 
jured. 
