schools have already undertaken is described at some length in an article entitled "Community Work in the Rural High School," in the Yearbook for 1910, but considerable progress has been made in the development of community work since that time. Examples are on record of high schools cooperating with State colleges of agriculture in running agricultural trains, conducting demonstrations, holding short courses for farmers, and performing various other useful services. One teacher of agriculture got his first hold on his farmer constituents by going to the market place on market days, getting up on a box, and talking to them about the importance of spraying their potatoes, and by demonstrating the use of spraying apparatus and solutions there in the market place.

Boys' and girls' club work has been successfully conducted and supervised by the teachers of agriculture and home economics in public high schools. These teachers have also performed useful services by visiting rural schools and helping the teachers in them to give instruction worth while in nature study and elementary agriculture. They have secured the loan of Babcock milk testers and then passed them around among the rural-school teachers, so that pupils in the grammar grades might learn how to use these pieces of apparatus for the purpose of improving the dairy cattle of the neighborhoods. Wherever a live teacher of agriculture, well prepared and enthusiastic, has studied the local problems in agriculture, there community work of some kind has been done. Seldom is such work patterned wholly after the work of other teachers. The problems of the rural people are so different in one community from those in another that the greatest latitude is given to the ingenuity and resourcefulness of those teachers who are earnestly seeking for opportunities to render the greatest service to the people who employ them.

INFLUENCE OF HIGH-SCHOOL AGRICULTURE.

Wherever the teaching of agriculture in high schools has been taken seriously, wherever suitable equipment and capable teachers have been provided, the schools and everyone connected with them have been benefited; the attendance has increased; the school work has assumed a more businesslike air, as if it dealt with the realities of life, with real problems instead of imaginary ones; and the relations between teachers, pupils, and parents have become closer and more sympathetic.

The boys in school have gone about their work more cheerfully; it has seemed to them worth while-a part of the business of life— and they are less anxious to get away from it "to begin doing something," as boys used to say. They stay in school longer; many boys in the agricultural courses are older than those in the other courses—

73029°-YBK 1912—31

resis dignifies an ancient

Cene and comet Sures: it develops in mi sous de Sard a great business SHE TAKE A De the serious affairs of Diabetes: a trains them to think * Music: it holds the Mi Pad vi bood-communion with * moesand errations language."

something more than a new

ates on 2 the surrounding homes des and strive material, soon acquire a foncs pen de routy such as other schools The people come to know the school The Lave a feeling that it is theirs, that ved & per deeper into their pockets to support Derse that asetonning their sons-not for some allurement Esant for but fre life in the world to-day, in the home Para acer S. wherever they go. Moreover, they 282 28 89vi sa stoi for everybody-of educational, social, $77. cect to L

I these people as not so important that a new subject has been added to the run as that the school has changed front. Insod ng to educate a select few for high professional positions, sedemcg to make a better people and a better land.

THE SETTLEMENT OF IRRIGATED LANDS.

By CARL S. SCOFIELD,

Agriculturist in Charge, Western Irrigation Agriculture, Bureau of Plant Industry.

INTRODUCTION.

The utilization of arid lands by means of irrigation has gone on in this country during the last half century with greatly increasing rapidity. The earlier efforts in this direction were but sporadic attempts to produce a few of the necessities of life in remote desert spots which had been invaded by hardy pioneers engaged in mining or other nonagricultural pursuits. Later came the discovery that large areas in our western deserts possessed a combination of soil, climate, and water supply well suited to the production of abundant and profitable crops and the maintenance of comfortable homes. This has resulted in extensive investments of capital, both private and public, in the construction of storage and diversion works for irrigation.

Many of the earlier irrigation enterprises were hazardous, not only because of the cheapness and inadequacy of the dams and ditches, but also because the State laws relating to the use of water were not satisfactory or were not well enforced. The quarrels and litigation that arose in times of water scarcity were conspicuous features of irrigation farming. During the early period, irrigation followed the p recently, with

instead of being provided in advance. More vement of State laws and of the administraerning the allotment and use of water, irriaken on a larger scale, and lands have become faster than they have been effectively occupied. ment number of settlers of the right kind has led of those interested to promote the settlement of ese activities have taken many directions, ve been enlisted in them.

ment is more acute on irrigated than on when an irrigation project is completed represents a large investment of capital must be paid. Any unutilized land within