lers in Sioux City, Iowa, the quality of
cattle, shipped from some places in Clay and Yankton Counties since the
introduction of irrigation, has increased twenty-five per cent., which
appears not improbable when we note the difference between the warm,
sweet flow of artesian water and the icy, brackish stuff of a prairie
slough.

The next and really the most important question--for man should not work
for the present and immediate future without the keenest regard to the
rights of posterity--is whether, under Dakotan conditions, artesian
irrigation is safe; whether there is not danger of its poisoning the
ground. Professor Upham unhesitatingly declares that on account of the
alkaline and saline properties in these artesian waters a continued use
of them for many years would render the land worthless. The assertion is
a rounder one than scientific men generally make, and must be received
with caution, though emanating from so high a source, for many samples
of South Dakotan waters, tested at Brookings, have shown no alkaline
reaction at all, and the professor's reasoning seems to rest chiefly
upon the North Dakotan waters, which for some reason show larger saline
percentages than the South. Then, too, he proceeds on the theory that a
yearly supply of one foot of water is necessary, whereas half that
amount during the dryest year, supplied through the five growing months,
would insure good crops. Four inches last July would have saved the
harvest. But anyway the entire amount of saline matter in South Dakotan
waters, according to Prof. Lewis McLouth, does not, on the average,
exceed one fifth of one per cent. after substracting all inert
substances, such as sand, clay, limestone, and iron ores; so that, if
six inches of water were applied to the lands, and all evaporated on the
surface, the salty crust would be one 1/160 of an inch thick. But as a
part of the water would run off into the streams, and much of it,
diluted with rain-water, would soak into the ground, the salty
ingredients would be mixed at once with at least a foot of the surface
earth, and would form less than one fifteenth of one per cent. of the
weight of that soil. These ingredients are salts of lime, magnesia,
potash, and soda. Now Dr. Bruckner, in an analysis of some soil in
Holland, which he pronounces remarkably rich, says that it contains over
fifteen per cent. of these same ingredients, or two hundred and
twenty-five times as much as six inches of