The enthusiastic irrigating farmer asserts that irrigation is "the foundation of truly scientific agriculture." "The western farmer who has learned to irrigate thinks it would be quite as illogical for him to leave the watering of his potato patch to the caprice of the clouds as for the housewife to defer her wash-day until she could catch rainwater in her tubs." Irrigation certainly furnishes the ideal method for raising a varied crop, giving each crop individual treatment, serving each of thirty varieties of plants and trees with just the amount of daily moisture they individually need, so as to produce maximum products. No wonder three crops in a year sometimes result, and sometimes five crops of alfalfa in the Southwest. Here we come to the highest development of intensive farming where the utmost value of agricultural science has free play and rivals the results of research and skill in any other line of human effort. _Dry Farming Possibilities_ Wonderful as these irrigation projects are, we must not fail to notice that this method of reclaiming arid lands can only be used where there are mountains, rivers or water courses which can be tapped. Ultimately an area as large as New England and New York State will probably be blessed by irrigation. But this is only a small fraction of the arid West. How shall the rest be reclaimed from the desert? Obviously by some method of dry farming, depending on and conserving the meager rain-fall. A few simple principles have been discovered, and some specialized machinery developed, by which successful dry farming is now conducted on an extensive scale along the arid plains between the Missouri river basin and the Sierra Nevada mountains. In brief these principles are: deep plowing, sub-soil packing, intensive cultivation, maintaining a fine dust mulch on the surface, the use of drought-resisting grains, especially certain varieties of wheat, allowing the land to lie fallow every other year to store moisture, and keeping a good per cent. of humus (vegetable matter) in the soil to resist evaporation. In every possible way the dry farmer conserves moisture. The dry mulch is particularly effective. Only a few years ago it was discovered that by capillary attraction much of the water absorbed by the spongy soil during a rain is lost by rapid evaporation, coming to the surface, just as oil runs up a wick. But by stirring the surface the "capillary ducts" are broken up and the moisture tends to stay down in the sub soil; for the two inches of dust mulch on the surface acts like a blanket, protecting the precious moisture from the dry winds. III. Some Results of Scientific Farming. _Agriculture Now a Profession_