The Winslow mail., 1911-02-18
MOISTURE FOR CROPS
Great Want of Farmer Is Water
During Dry Spells.
Many Localities In West Where Sup
ply of Water Can be Obtained for
Irrigation, Defying Drouths
and Assuring Big Crops.

MI H. H. Lyon says. L udu IdLH-
or see the government assist in solv-
ing some of our problems of water
supply, than to see so much money
going into irrigation and other
schemes at enormous distances from
our markets" Owing to the fact that
copious rains have frequently fallen
soon after great battles, in which
there had been heavy artillery firing,
it was generally believed that the fir
ing of heavy guns caused the mois-
ture with which the air was laden to
be condensed into drops, and fall to
the earth, producing rain in a dry
time. In order to test this belief,
congress appropriated several thous-
and dollars, which was expended dur
ing a great drouth in Texas by army
officers, writes ]. H. Ingram in the
Country Gentleman. The heaviest
guns were fired continuously for
week and brought no rain.
The great want of farmers Is mois
ture in their fields when rains do not
come at the proper intervals, and
their crops suffer or are utterly de-
stroyed. The person who could dis
cover an effectual remedy for the Sc
we're drouths to which most of our
country is subject would be greater
benefactor than the inventor of the
steam engine or electric telegraph. A
Wisconsin writer says: "a sufficient
amount of moisture stored up in the
earth would supply this want (rain in
a dry time) even If no rains fell from
the time of planting crops until har
vest time"
Had he said a sufficient amount of
water stored up on top of the earth,
could have agreed with him. In Colo
RADIO, Utah and California, where they
can obtain supply of water on top Of
the ground for irrigation, they can
defy the. drouths and raise good crops
every year. Water where it can be
turned on the fields when needed is a
sure thing. Capillary attraction. or
the wonderful rise Of the ground wa
ter to the surface, in spite Of the at
traction of gravitation, is Of immense
value to agriculture when assisted by
the cultivator; but there is limit be-
yond which it will not work, and
reservoir of water a few feet under
his fields would be of no use to the
farmer unless brought to the surface
by pump.
Thre are places where there are
abundant supplies of water stored in
the earth; but the crops suffer as bad
ly there from drouth as in any region
of our country. In Kalamazoo, Mich,
there is large extent of country un-
derneath which there is an ineXhaust-
ible supply of water which. when
tapped by artesian wells, rises nearly
to the surface. The city of Kalama-
zoo, containing $4,000 inhabitants, is
fully supplied by artesian wells. The
water is underneath the valley like
shallow lake, and is forced up nearly
to the surface, when tapped, by the
pressure of the rain water descend
ing from the surrounding hills. The
bountiful reservoir is too deep for
capillary attraction to draw it up,
and when the writer was there du-
ring an August drouth there was no
green to be seen in the meadows, and
the grass in the city park had to be
watered to keep it alive.
There is water enough under the
great Desert of Sahara. Wherever ar
tesian wells have been bored a plenti-
fhl supply has been found, and if ca
pillary attraction could bring it up,
land plowed nine inches deep will re-
tain all the rain water it is capable Of
absorbing, and as much as if plowed
deeper. OF course elayey soils will re-
tain more than sandy. When the rain
water has sunk much below the depth
we usually plow, it has escaped be-
yond the power of capillary attraction
to bring it back to the surface. l
have been in coal mines in Pennsyl-
vania, from which the steam pump
was working night and day hosting
out a stream of water nearly enough
to turn a mill, and yet the farmers
fields near by were suffering for lack
of it.
Capillary attraction often receives
credit for moisture which it does not
supply, but which is supplied by con-
densation of the moisture in the at
mosphere-like the condensation of
the drops on the outside of the ice
pitcher. You break the crust that
has formed on the surface of your
corn field, and expose the cooler earth
below, the air coming in contact with
that cooler earth imparts moisture to
it. The condensation is not so ap-
parent as in the case of the ice-water
pitcher, because the soil absorbs it,
which the pitcher does not The gov
ernment has tried to get rain by fir
ing cannon and failed. 1t is extreme
ly doubtful whether it could get any
water-supply for Mr.. Lyon except by
irrigation.