years

It is predicted that in two or three California will have enough English walnuts, of superior quality, to supply the United States.

It is claimed that a million olive trees have been set within the last two years. California olives are steadily gaining favor in the markets.

The San Bernardino rock pile is short on labor. The industry is so little appreciated by tramps they are giving the country a wide berth.

It is stated that from forty to forty-five per cent. of the West-bound tourist travel this season have gone to make their homes in Southern California.

Higher prices for oranges at Redlands has created such a demand for trees as to exhaust the nursery stocks, and planting seed beds is again in vogue.

A poultry ranch with a capital of $25,000, with capacity for an annual production of 90,000 broilers and 2,000,000 eggs, is being established near San Francisco.

The year's planting of orange trees has been unexpectedly large, and the demand for olive trees has been so enormous that the supply is practically exhausted.

Cahuenga vegetable growers have reaped a rich harvest this winter, shipping string beans, green peas and tomatoes to San Francisco. Tomatoes fruit there all winter.

The Redlands Citrograph says the "Damascus Town Site" is a "gigantic fraud, a tremendous fake, and a scorching swindle," being located out on the Salton desert.

The big storage reservoir of the Poso Irrigation District has been completed and the water turned in. It will take six weeks to fill it at the rate of 30,000,000 gallons daily.

The application of the Alta Irrigation District for the cancellation of its county assessments, on the ground that it is a municipal corporation, has been granted. It raises a point of wide-spread public interest.

Good orange lands are in active demand in Southern California at round prices, it being generally comprehended that the area of such lands, of good quality and safe from frosts, is comparatively very limited.

A subscription of $3,000 has been made to a cannery company at Redlands, conditional on a total local subscription of $5,000 and payable when two acres of ground and a plant capable of packing 50,000 cans of fruit, and costing $12,000, has been erected.

COLORADO.

Medford is sending 600 boxes of Newton pippin apples to the London market.

A large ice plant is being erected at Grand Junction, and is expected to be in full operation early in May.

Colonel R. J. Hinton, of New York, has been recently in Colorado examining a number of projects for Eastern capitalists.

The Greeley Tribune proves pretty conclusively it will not pay to feed lambs for market in that section on alfalfa hay at $2 per ton.

The scarcity of snow in the mountains prompts the State engineer to caution water consumers to save and economize the probably limited supply.

Of the 250,000 acres of land that will be available for cultivation in the Grand valley when brought under irrigation only 75,000 acres are now under ditch.

It was estimated that in the Grand valley holes were dug for the planting of between 750,000 and 1,000,000 fruit trees when the water was turned into the irrigating ditches.

The Rio Grande Railway Company are arranging to erect a large fruit warehouse near the depot at Grand Junction to facilitate fruit shipments. The business has outgrown the usual methods of handling and present accommodations.

Professor Carpenter of the Agricultural Experiment Station is planning to make an irrigation survey of the San Luis valley during a portion of the summer, with the help of the water commissioners and ditch companies of that valley.

The Pawnee Pass Canal and Reservoir scheme, which will cover much excellent land on the north side of the South Platte river in Colorado, is expected to be built. There are now a number of corps of surveyors at work on the enterprise, among them being Messrs. Walters, Preston and Stimson, former students of the Agricultural College.

The supply of snow at present in the mountains of Colorado seems to be less than the usual amount. This does not necessarily mean that the streams will be low, but unless the rains of spring and of May and June are more abundant than usual, it will follow. With late snows the high waters are usually early, as the snow melts soon. The cutting off of the forests, and their destruction by fire, has caused the loss of the natural covering which formerly preserved the snow until much later in summer than it is now commonly found.

IDAHO.

Squirrel-shooting parties are necessarily popular in the Palouse country.

The construction of an irrigation plant is in progress for the Asotin flats in the Snake River valley, near Lewiston.

The Idaho Canal Company, under the presidency of Mr. Frank W. Smith, has commenced work, and 100 teams are now engaged in construction.

Two colonies of Iowa Dunkards, numbering about seventy in all, have recently located in Idaho. This is the beginning

of a considerable movement.

The Electric Light Company of Boise has doubled the capacity of its plant. It now has 660-horse power, and will furnish power for manufacturing purposes.

A statement was recently made under oath in court by a well-known fruit grower of Lewiston that the average profit from his farm in a year was $700 an acre.

An immigration congress has recently been held at Boise City, which resulted in a permanent organization to promote the general welfare of the State. An effort will be made to raise $10,000 for that purpose.

KANSAS.

Arrangements have been made to extend the Amity irrigation canal twenty miles in the western part of the State. It is one of the best ditches in the West.

The State school fund has an accumulation of $208,000. The officials are anxious to invest this in school bonds, but none are offered, and it will probably be invested. in United States bonds.

NEBRASKA.

There will be a great many trials of windmill irrigation in the western part of the State this year.

A butter and egg station has been established at Niobrara, one of several along the Milwaukee line.

The Beerline and Smith irrigation ditch, near Hedberg, is completed, and they are counting on full crops this season.

The average yield from the sugar-beet industry in Nebraska is fifteen tons an acre. The producer is paid $5 a ton. The tops, also, have a value.

NEW MEXICO.

A vigorous horticultural society is promoting fruit culture at Hagerman.

A beet-sugar factory is to be built at Eddy, $185,000 having been raised for it, of which $15,000 was a local subscription.

Efforts are again being made for the extension of the Pecos Valley railroad from Roswell to the Texas panhandle, to a connection with the Santa Fé.

The Taos valley, the garden spot of Northern New Mexico, is feeling the impetus from new capital introduced for both mining and ditch building.

The Maxwell Land Grant Company is doing a commendable work in getting out two carloads of cottonwood trees from the lower Rio Grande, to distribute among the settlers along the Vermejo canal.

Three extensive dams and irrigation systems are projected on the Rio Grande river. The International dam, just north of El Paso, Texas, which is to be built in order to insure water to the farmers in the Isleta valley, Texas, and to the Mexicans in Mexico on the other bank of the river, both of whom complain that they have a moral if not a legal claim against the United States for diverting the water higher up on the river, and so depriving the people around El Paso of their water rights. The Mexican government shows a disposition to provide half the necessary capital, and Congress will be asked to appropriate $1,000,000 as the share of our government. A second dam is contemplated near Rincoe, the capital for which is being sought in London, but so far without success. A third dam is projected near Fort Seldon, and is in the hands of Chicago capitalists, who are making the necessary preparations to raise the

Robert Scott has plowed up eight acres of hops on his ranch near North Yakima, and will plant 1,000 peach and apple trees, with which he has had great success in the past.

The Walla Walla Water Company has checkmated the city in its plans for ob

A railway grade is being made through Provo canyon; nobody knows for whom.

The Bear River Irrigation Company are planning for a large movement of settlers to their lands this year.

Brigham gardeners and fruit growers report an absence of the usual worm pests, and anticipate a large and superior crop. Sheep men are happy this spring. Their flocks have wintered well, there has been plenty of feed and the fleeces are large and of good quality.

Work has begun in earnest on the great power dam in the Ogden canyon, and the Union Pacific company has put in a branch track to facilitate the delivery of material.

The governor and legislature have memorialized Congress to set apart and donate a portion of the abandoned Fort Cameron reservation for the establishment therein of a State normal school.

Salt Lake City is gratified by a reorganization of the Oregon Short Line and Utah Northern railway, which makes it an independent line with headquarters there, and under the management of a Utah railway

man.

the property and rights which it expected to utilize.

The corporation counsel of Spokane says he has 500 cases pending, and is about to commence no less than 2,000 new cases on behalf of the city. He asks allowance for a typewriter. It looks as though he might need more than one.

Professor Harry Landes has been appointed State geologist. The office was created many years ago, but was grossly misused and was abandoned as a dead let

There is no State appropriation in its behalf, and the university assumes all the expense of an excellent equipment, and the official conduct of the office.

WYOMING.

The flock masters are preparing for the largest crop of wool on record.

Russian wolf hounds are being used successfully to run down coyotes.

A large immigration from Europe is expected in the Big Horn basin this year.

The Cody Canal Company has the first contract that has been signed by the President under the Carey act, for 70,000 acres to be irrigated.

Forest The theory upon which legPreserves. islation has been enacted for the preservation of forests in many portions of the West has been that by their destruction, either for commercial purposes or by fires, the absorption of the rainfall into the earth is retarded, and the snows melt more rapidly for lack of tree shelter. In a communication to the Fresno Republican, Mr. H. F. Dunnington cites the experience of mountaineers to controvert that theory, and asks attention to the following facts: That the snow lasts longer and is much heavier above the forest belts than under the shelter of the trees; that around and beneath the trees the snow melts and runs away sooner than where there is no shelter from the sun's warmth; that the glaciers and great deposits of snow and ice, which are the chief source of the river supply, are nowhere found within the wooded belts, and there is no eternal snow except where there are no trees. He instances that the valleys of Switzerland are neither burned up by droughts nor swept by floods, although surrounded by vast barren mountains. He maintains that the practice which prevailed during all the past among the Indians of an annual burning of the undergrowth and grass was not detrimental to the strong and healthy growing timber, and that the great injury has chiefly come since short-sighted enthusiasts have interfered to prevent the burning until the undergrowth has become so rank that an accidental fire causes the greater damage. He makes the sensible suggestion that legislation might better compel and direct the planting of new trees for each one utilized commercially. His article offers food for thought and suggests that there are two sides to this as to most questions.

An It is a matter of more than Unfair passing concern that the Advantage. beet sugar industry should be brought prominently to the public attention throughout the entire country. With Cuba's production reduced to almost nothing, and our legislation favoring the

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German producers, we are sacrificing one of the greatest opportunities ever presented to our Western people. The irrigated sections are especially interested in this matter. Mr. T. R. Cutler, manager of the Lehi, Utah, sugar factory, was before the ways and means committee at Washington a few days ago representing the sugar beet producers. He made the point that the Germans were gaining an unfair advantage by reason of bounty. It was neither "free nor fair trade," and in his opinion the industry and capital of our country were entitled to protection against it as much as they were against the guns of a foreign nation. Germany was taking advantage of the Cuban war to crush our sugar industry, and he appealed to the committee to recommend an additional duty on German sugar.

Chances
for

Poor Men.

The Idaho Statesman would not discourage the poor man from settling in that State. If he thinks he can see the opportunity to utilize his energy to good effect, he is welcome to come and try. It pertinently suggests that many of the leading men of the future will probably be from those who entered the State short of this world's goods, and who grasp the opportunities which are now presented, as they will not be when the development is further advanced. Look where you will, most of the wealthy men in all Western communities are those whose foresight led them to acquire property at its lowest value, and have seen it grow according to the wisdom of their selection.

asking themselves: 'How much do we owe these Eastern people anyway?" From their mines, the few people in the West have turned a stream of probably five thousand millions of dollars into the coffers of the East during the last forty-six years. When that big stream began to flow the East was so poor that it had no better credit than Egypt. Because of that stream it has become the foremost power in all the world, and in return these Eastern people treat the West as an encumbrance, inhabited by barbarians only fit to be governed by the strong hand of the federal power, and only fit for the work of the earnest missionary. In contemplating it, Western men reflect that when civilization goes to seed, and its utmost exertions are turned solely to making more money, it is worse in its effect upon the world than absolute barbarism."

Fencing It goes without saying that In or Out. if there had been a universal principle by which fencing could be regulated, and laws had been based on that principle, an immense expenditure, in the aggregate, would have been saved to the farmers of this country. The point has recently been raised and good argument presented why the fencing in of all stock kept by the farmer should be the rule. It does seem an injustice that a man should be permitted to let his stock run at large and trespass on his neighbors, perhaps unruly animals at that, and compel a dozen of them to build fences for their protection and his benefit, when there is no other necessity for such structures. If each farmer fenced such fields as he needed to pasture and that alone, and could be held legally responsible for damage caused by his stock he would certainly see that his fences were kept in order, and that the gates should be kept closed. He would have option as to how much land he would enclose, and would build only as necessary. It would involve no more care than is now necessary, and it would certainly require far less fence than is now in use, for which there is not only a large first cost, but a constant annual charge for repairs.

False The secretary of agriculture Economy. is making a hobby of saving money out of the appropriations for his department. He even ventures to ignore the

specific acts of Congress, and, when compelled to execute the law as it stands, does it with the worst possible grace, and evidently with a view to making the seed department odious. Instead of seeking to carry out the law in its true spirit, which would be vastly beneficial to the farmers of the country, he is apparently willing to let his department become of actual disrepute among the people for whose especial benefit it was created, after a long and earnest struggle on the part of broad-minded and public-spirited men.

The There are no crops more Sugar worthy the attention of our Industry. people than are those adapted to the production of sugar, whether cane, sorghum, beets, corn or the maple tree. European countries have been forced to abandon wheat growing because of the low price, and they are finding it to their advantage to encourage, even by liberal export bounties the culture of the sugar beet. Our market absorbs immense quantities of their sugar and it is a pertinent question which hardly permits more than one answer, can they overcome the disadvantages of worn out land, long shipments, and pay the bounties and still derive a greater benefit from that crop than is possible to our own people with our fresh, strong soils, good transportation facilities and improved implements for the cultivation? The answer surely must be a negative.

Good

No subject is worthier of sturdy Roads. thought and none of greater practical importance to the farmer than is the improvement of the roads over which he must transport his products. For this he must provide both the vehicle and the motive power. If it costs one dollar a ton to haul over the present soft and badly-kept roadway, there is a saving equivalent to that amount, if the road be put in condition to double the load upon each ton of traffic. A ton of corn to the acre is a fair yield and a saving of forty dollars on a forty-acre field is ten per cent upon four hundred dollars. A road tax for that amount would be startling, wouldn't it? And yet, measured on a business basis, as the banker, merchant, or railroad man would estimate, it would be a good investment. But that would