The best agriculture, considered in reference to the permanency of its results, develops in old regions, where the skinning process has passed, where the hide has been sold, and where people come back to utilize what is left. The skinning process is proceeding at this minute in the bountiful new lands of the United States; and in parts of the older states, and even also in parts of the newer ones, not only the skin but the tallow has been sold. We are always seeking growing-room, and we have found it. But now the Western civilization has met the Eastern, and the world is circumferenced. We shall develop the tropics and push far toward the poles; but we have now fairly discovered the island that we call the earth, and we must begin to make the most of it. _Another philosophy of agriculture._ Practically all our agriculture has been developed on a rainfall basis. There is ancient irrigation experience, to be sure, but the great agriculture of the world has been growing away from these regions. Agriculture is still moving on, seeking new regions; and it is rapidly invading regions of small rainfall. About six-tenths of the land surface of the globe must be farmed, if farmed at all, under some system of water-saving. Of this, about one-tenth is redeemable by irrigation, and the remainder by some system of utilization of deficient rainfall, or by what is inappropriately known as dry-farming. The complementary practices of irrigation and dry-farming will develop a wholly new scheme of agriculture and a new philosophy of country life (page 44). Even in heavy rainfall countries there is often such waste of water from run-off that the lands suffer severely from droughts. No doubt the hilly lands of our best farming regions are greatly reduced in their crop-producing power because people do not prepare against drought as consciously as they provide against frost (page 52). It is often said that we shall water Eastern lands by irrigation, and I think that we shall; but our first obligation is to save the rainfall water by some system of farm-management or dry-farming. Agriculture rests on the saving of water. _The obligation of the farmer._ The farmer is rapidly beginning to realize his obligation to society. It is usual to say that the farmer feeds the world, but the larger fact is that he saves the world. The economic system depends on him. Wall Street watches the crops. As cities increase proportionately in population, the farmer assumes greater relative importance, and he becomes more and more a marked man. Careful and scientific husbandry is rising in this new country. We have come to a realization of the fact that our resources are not unlimited. The mining of fertilizing materials for transportation to a few spots on the earth will some day cease. We must make the farming sustain itself, at the same time that it provides the supplies for mankind.