Fort Wrangel news., 1898-08-03
.AS ID FARMING IN ALASKA
Experiments to be Tried by the
 Government Agent.
AN AGENT APPOINTED.
Some Experiments to be Tried. Is II True2.
 Editorial Comment. Colonial Possessions.
(Portland OregonianJ

About a month ago Congress appro- priated 3lO,OO0 to be spent in ascertain ing the agricultural resources of Alas ka, and Secretary Wilson at once ap- pointed Professor C. C. GeOrgeson, of Kansas, special agent to conduct the investigation. The professor arrived here a few days ago direct from Wash ington, and after making arrangements to have some experimental farming and meteorological observations car ried on in this vicinity, went to Sitka, where he will have his headquarte Is. He will work in conjunction with Ob- server Ball, recently appointed chief of the Alaska signal service.
 Professor Georgeson's instructions are to learn what food products can be grown in the various parts of this big territory, and to what extent their cul- tiyation can be depended upon as fac tors in It's development. He proposes to do this by establishing experiment tai farms in the various sections. One of these will be located somewhere on the southern coast, one at Cooks ln- let, one on kadiak island and one in the neighborhood of Circle City. Each will be devoted to the culture of cereals and vegetables that are known to thrive ill similar soil and climate elsewhere, and the professors collection of seeds includes samples from Scandinavia, Canada, Finland, Minnesota and Wyo- ming. From these farm stations he hopes to ascertain the agricultural pos abilities of the country. He has al ready made arrangements to exchange information with all agent of the Do- minion government, who is going to plant about forty acres near Fort Sel- kirk in potatoes.
 In some parts of Alaska almost any kind of vegetation will thrive that grows in the far northern states. On the Teller reindeer reservation, near Behring strait, potatoes as large as hens eggs are raised every summer, and on the Yukon, not far from Circle City, colony of Roman Catholic fe- male missionaries has successfully cul tivated all the hardy cereals and vari ous kinds of vegetables. The garden and farm of these good women is one of the curiosities of Alaska.
 Not the least interesting of the ex- periments which Professor Georgeson contemplateS making Is practical test to discover the depth to which the earth is frozen. His paraphernalia in cludes boring apparatus, which is warranted to penetrate terra firma to depth where it is kept from freezing by internal heat. The professor opines that in Northern Alaska the frost eX tends clear down to where the prehis- toric glacial age left it. The ground up there never thaws deeper than eighteen inches, but on the lower Yukon, where the sun gets better show, the earth is softened to d depth of three feet. It is a strange thing that, while vegetation in Oregon is dead so long as the ground is frozen, it not only grows, but ma lures, atop of ice i'll Alaska. On the farm near Circle City the plough that prepares the ground for potato plant ing scrapes the top of the ice, and at no time does the thaw go deeper than two feet. The sun shines so continuously and fiercely up there-the thermome- ter ill midsummer averages 96 degrees in the shade-that plant life is forced to maturity much more rapidly than in the states.