keep the lid on. Let us examine each of these two desiderata with some care.

When a field is left to the mere play of the elements, a falling rain may fail to sink into the earth at all or to be of any advantage whatever to herbage growing there. Usually it would, if of any volume, do a little good, but it would at best accomplish but a trifle of the benefit within its power if housed and husbanded. Part would at once run off into ditches and brooks, another would form into little pools over crusted earth and forthwith evaporate. Still another would sink 1, 2 or 3 inches, only to be hunted out in a few hours by sun and wind and driven off into the air. The areas of feeble rainfall are always areas of fierce winds and of glaring and ample sunshine, both powerful evaporating agents.

The U. S. Geological Survey Report to which I have already referred, says, "The amount of water that falls in the arid area is enormous when the number of cubic feet to the square mile is calculated, but much of it comes in very heavy showers, after long

intervals of drouth, often with severe hot winds. If a portion of the rainfall could be stored much of it could be used for irrigation. Evaporation also increases rapidly in amount, from east to west, in nearly inverse ratio to the precipitation. Its estimated amount is 3 feet in the eastern portion of the region and 6 feet in the western, including the mountains."

Now suppose that when the rain descends. it finds the soil, especially at the surface, in perfect and splendid tilth, open, porous, friable, thirsty, with no crusts or lumps anywhere. Unless it forms a deluge, a cloudburst, the water is out of sight at once, no run-off and next to no evaporation. It is stored in a government reservoir provided by the government of the universe for this express purpose, which, if you guard it well, will answer as completely as any of those the United States is erecting at so great cost.

So much for "bottling" the water that falls; now how shall we keep the cork in against those inebriates, Sun and Wind, ever at work to suck it up and drink it?

The answer is, in brief: Kill capillarity at the surface by keeping the top soil continually in the form of a mulch.

Hold the extreme edge of a sugar lump in water and see the moisture walk up through the lump as if gravity did not exist. The force called capillarity is acting, the same that lifts oil up a wick, the same that raises bottom water in a sandbank so that it is always moist to within a few inches of the top.

Permit the surface soil to become hard and capillarity plays right into the hands of sun and wind, emptying the earth of its moisture at a fearful rate. Annul capillary action at the top and you keep the water jugged. Annul it at the top, observe. Lower down you do not want to interfere with it even if you could. You wish to promote it in every way, that the far-down moisture may, as wanted, come up and bathe the seeds you plant and the rootlets and roots they put forth. Free capillarity below is a necessity. That is largely what we plow for. But cap