AMERICA IN EECENT TIMES. The past fifty years have been :t period of careful cultivation, though with many exceldions, in America. Thor ough drainage and deep plowing, established in England, ha ye heon also American. A great variety of fertilizers are widely nsed. In the l'niled States alone i1 is estimated that about tons of sneli fer tilizers are annually consumed. The storing of green crops in silos has beeome common. A great amount of intelligent work has been given to securing plants and trees suited to local con ditions in different climates. Numerous varie ties of all sorts of cultivated plants have been obtained through selection and otherwise. and in this way the areas devoted to different crops have been greatly extended. In the vicinity of the large cities market gardening has been a profitable branch of agriculture, and has been the culmination of careful cultivation. Some what similar to it has been an industry which has developed in the United States under the name of "truck farming," and is carried on in places remote from markets. A large part of the vegetables consumed in the large American cities come from places from 500 to 1500 miles distant. According to a census bulletin, issued in 1891, in the United States, upward of $100, 000,000 of capital is invested in this industry; 500,000 acres are given to it, more than 230,000 persons are employed, and the annual return is $76,000,000. The South Atlantic States are largely interested in "truck farming," which, under favorable conditions, is generally very profitable. Other forms of special agricultural industries which have made great progress in recent years are the breeding of animals, fruit culture, poultry raising, and bee-keeping.
Cottonseed, formerly considered very largely a waste product, is now utilized in a variety of forms, and adds largely to the value of the cotton crop. Not only large quantities of oil are made
from this seed, but also oil cake and meal for feeding stuffs and fertilizers. Even the hulls of cotton are used for fertilizers, cattle food, fuel, and paper-making.
In speaking of the agriculture of the United States, besides branches touched upon, reference should be made to tobacco, which is grown widely; to the sugar-cane. grown chiefly on the alluvial lands of the Mississippi; to rice, grown profitably in the lowlands of certain Southern States; to the tropical and sub-tropical products of Florida and California, and to the immense flocks and herds of the "ranches" in the mountain region and on the great plains of the western half of the continent.
In the West, since 1880, irrigation has been employed on a large scale in an attempt to re claim land within the arid belt, a region extend ing from the centre of Kansas and Nebraska to the furthermost Pacific Coast range of moun tains. In that region of scanty rainfall. irriga tion may be practiced by taking a water supply from the large streams flowing from the mountains. Within a small area. water may be obtained from the "underfiow" by moans of ar tesian wells. Although the results of surveys show that only a comparatively small part of the belt can be irrigated, in certain localities thousands of acres are being made profitable. In two valleys of Arizona, (the Salt and the Gila) more than 450 miles of irrigating ditches were opened in the ten years 1880-90. In the single county of San Bernardino, Cal., irrigation increased the number of acres under cultivation from 18,400 in 1880 to 144,950 in 1S90. See IRRIGATION ; ARTESIAN WELL.