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THE HISTORY OF DRY FARMING

The great nations of antiquity lived and prospered in arid and semiarid countries. In the more or less rainless regions of China, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Egypt, Mexico, and Peru, the greatest cities and the mightiest peoples flourished in ancient days. Of the great civilizations of history only that of Europe has rooted in a humid climate. As Hilgard has suggested, history teaches that a high civilization goes hand in hand with a soil that thirsts for water. To-day, current events point to the arid and semiarid regions as the chief dependence of our modern civilization. In view of these facts it. | THE HISTORY OF DRY FARMING The great nations of antiquity lived and prospered in arid and semiarid countries. In the more or less rainless regions of China Mesopotamia Palestine Egypt Mexico and Peru the greatest cities and the mightiest peoples flourished in ancient days. Of the great civilizations of history only that of Europe has rooted in a humid climate. As Hilgard has suggested history teaches that a high civilization goes hand in hand with a soil that thirsts for water. To-day current events point to the arid and semiarid regions as the chief dependence of our modern civilization. In view of these facts it may be inferred that dry-farming is an ancient practice. It is improbable that intelligent men and women could live in Mesopotamia for example for thousands of years without discovering methods whereby the fertile soils could be made to produce crops in a small degree at least without irrigation. True the low development of implements for soil culture makes it fairly certain that dry-farming in those days was practiced only with infinite labor and patience and that the great ancient nations found it much easier to construct great irrigation systems which would make crops certain with a minimum of soil tillage than so thoroughly to till the soil with imperfect implements as to produce certain yields without irrigation. Thus is explained the fact that the historians of antiquity speak at length of the wonderful irrigation systems but refer to other forms of agriculture in a most casual manner. While the absence of agricultural machinery makes it very doubtful whether dry-farming was practiced extensively in olden days yet there can be little doubt of the high antiquity of the practice. Kearney quotes Tunis as an example of the possible extent of dry-farming in early historical days. Tunis is under an average rainfall of about nine inches and there are no evidences of irrigation having been practiced there yet at El Djem are the ruins of an amphitheater .