R

OOKS county is one of the places in Kansas that is blessed with a fair average rainfall, the amount generally ranging from twenty to thirty inches annually, the trouble being that there is frequently no rain. when it is needed the most, and possibly plenty of it when it is not wanted. In addition, there are a number of years when there is a general deficiency.

The county lies just west of the center of the State and thirty miles south of the Nebraska state line. It was organized in 1872 and now has 10,000 population, over 100 schools, and is crossed by two railroads. The climate is as good as that of any place in the country. The soil is a dark sandy loam and produces first-class crops. Grass covers the entire county where not in cultivation, affording good pasture all the year round. Hay can be had almost for the cutting, thus making it a good section for stock and dairymen. Water is pure and plentiful in streams, and springs and wells

are numerous.

The first settlers as a rule were grain growers, breaking up the native sod and cultivating about 200,000 acres of this vast meadow. With thirty inches of rainfall the crops were good, but with only twenty inches they were failures and those who had no cattle left the county. After several more attempts at dry farming, those that remained began to cast about for some method of supplying the small amount of moisture lacking, and of saving the surplus rainfall which they did get occasionally.

Many plans and suggestions were offered, but the only practical solution was irrigation supplemented by subsoiling. Investigations have demonstrated that there is a sufficiency of water if it is conserved and utilized. Wells are being bored, wind mills and pumps erected, water courses dammed, streams diverted by ditches and every means to impound the water and hold it for a time of need, resorted to.

The results have been gratifying in the extreme, and doubts concerning the arti

ficial application of water removed from the minds of the most skeptical. Their only question now is, "How can we irrigate?"

There are two irrigation canals in Rooks county, owned respectively by the Bow Creek Irrigation Company and the Stockton Irrigation & Power Company. The Bow creek ditch was the first to be built. It is seven and one-half miles long, has a capacity of thirty-five second feet of water and covers about 1,000 acres of land. The Stockton ditch is three miles long, with a capacity of 100 second feet, and waters about 800 acres. It can be considerably extended.

In addition to the two enterprises mentioned above, there are a number of small individual irrigation plants.

Last year was the first in active operation of the Bow creek system, and the crop yields were astonishing.

Fifty acres of potatoes produced 10,000 bushels; onions yielded 600 bushels per acre of fine quality; cabbage four to six tons per acre; turnips 100 bushels on eight square rods, or at the rate of 2,000 bushels an acre. For oats, the land was irrigated in November, 1894, and seed sown in March, 1895; the yield was sixty-five bushels per acre, weighing forty pounds per bushel. In the same field and under the same conditions, except the irrigation, the oats yielded seven bushels an acre; corn, irrigated once, forty to fifty bushels an acre; the corn not irrigated was a failure.

On four acres under the Bow creek ditch, F. Near raised 1,100 bushels of best grade potatoes, with an actual expenditure of only $7.00 for labor up to the time of digging.

An accident was the means of benefitting A.. Jones. On July 19, 1894, the water broke through the bank of the ditch and flooded an acre of corn. On July 26 there was a hot wind, but it in no way affected or injured the acre that was accidentally flooded.

J. K. Wendover raised good corn with one watering, and first-class potatoes. Cooper Bros., under the Stockton ditch,

THE

HE large checks described in the last chapter are almost always fed from the side and not from one end. They are generally so long that if fed from one end the water would have too long a run to reach the other end. It would also have less room in which to spread, and the large head needed to cover so much ground below would cut the soil too much, unless it could spread out. In case you want to cut the check in more than one place to get the water quickly out of it, which you generally should do, you cannot empty it so well from the end as from the side.

When made with the plow, as described, there will be a low swale adjoining the bank which will hold water too long, unless the bank is cut all the way down. Some things at some times of the year will not be injured by this. Old alfalfa, in winter, seems to suffer little if any in this way. But young alfalfa or grain would be damaged at once by it. Most

fruit trees would not be hurt by it in winter, whereas it would be ruin to some, and damage to the fruit on most anything but pears to have them in such a swale in the summer or spring. And when the sun is hot, old alfalfa and grain old enough to cut for hay would quickly show a material loss.

On the reclaimed swamp land mentioned in the last chapter all the irrigation of alfalfa and grain is in the winter, and even that of corn is practically so, it being irrigated. not more than twice and often only once after coming up. Remember the average rainfall here is about four inches, or practically nothing in assisting the summer growth. But this soil is a mixture of tule roots, rushes and reeds for many feet deep, with water at an average of about eight feet, and rarely over ten feet below, the year round. The capillary attraction of this soil is enough to draw water more than half way to the top. It is very re