retain
many times the amount of water that a tumbler full of buckshot will.
The atmosphere quickly drinks up the moisture from the soil unless
we Prevent it. This we do by means of a soil "blanket," called a
"mulch" This finely pulverized surface largely prevents the
moisture below from evaporating, and at the same time keeps the
surface in such condition that it readily absorbs the dew and the
showers. Water moves in the soil as it does in a lamp wick, by
capillary attraction; the more deeply and densely the soil is
saturated with moisture, the more easily the water moves upward,
just as oil "climbs up" a wet wick faster than it does a dry one.
One can illustrate the effect of this fine soil "mulch" in
preventing evaporation by placing some powdered sugar on a lump of
loaf sugar and putting the lump sugar in water. The powdered sugar
will remain dry even when the lump has become so thoroughly
saturated that it crumbles to pieces.

"We have no useless American acres," said Secretary Wilson. "We
shall make them all productive. We have agricultural explorers in
every far corner of the world; and they are finding crops which have
become so acclimated to dry conditions, similar to our own West,
that we shall in time have plants thriving upon our so-called arid
lands. We shall cover this arid area with plants of various sorts
which will yield hundreds of millions of tons of additional forage
and grains for Western flocks and herds. Our farmers will grow these
upon land now considered practically worthless."

In this way it has been estimated that in the neighborhood of one
hundred million acres of the American desert can be reclaimed to the
most intensive agriculture. (See a study of the possible additions
to available land in Prof. W. S. Thompson's "Population, a Study of
Malthusianism": Col. U, 1915.) Frederick V. Coville, the chief
botanist of the Department of Agriculture, does not hesitate to say
that in the strictly arid regions there are many millions of acres,
now considered worthless for agriculture, which are as certain to be
settled in small farms as were the lands of Illinois.

Land that was thought to be absolute desert has been made to yield
heavy crops of grain and forage by this method without irrigation.

Macaroni wheat will grow with ten inches of rainfall, and yield
fifteen bushels to the acre. This however is less than the average
wheat yield in the United States.

Much can be done by dry farming;