“It should be said that the good effects of the hot baths are confined to the parts actually immersed and do not extend to the whole plant.  Thus, on the same stem we may see developing only the branches that have been treated with the bath, while the others remain torpid.  This is easy to verify with the lilac or the willow.

“If Lobner is to be believed, we may substitute for the water bath one of steam.  He has obtained good results with the lily of the valley.  The thing is possible, but the method used by Molisch is more practical.

“How shall we explain the good effect of warm water on branches in a resting state?  We are absolutely ignorant of its mechanism, as we are also in the case of etherification.  But if we knew everything, science would be no longer amusing!”—­Condensed, from THE LITERARY DIGEST.

There are many new uses for water:  It will not be long before every truck and every commercial flower garden will have overhead irrigation.  This is merely gas pipes ("seconds” rejected for blow holes or porosity are usually used) supported on posts say six feet above the ground.  They are usually placed parallel about fifty feet apart, which will make four to the acre square, and have a single row of holes and a handle on each pipe, so that the spray can be turned in either direction; with a high-water pressure, often supplied by gravity, they may be farther apart with larger holes.

These not only have saved us from fear of drought, but they supply the moisture in the natural manner and at the right time and increase fertility to an astonishing degree.

When you take a shower bath yourself, that is overhead irrigation.

The gasoline, kerosene, or heavy oil one man farm tractor, so made that it can be used to plow, to climb a side hill, to run a saw or a pump, is the coming factor in garden and farm advance.  Huge fortune awaits the first manufacturer who will standardize it, cheapen it, and specialize on it.  The horse is the greatest care and the greatest risk on the little farm.  He costs more than a tractor would, he is eating his head off half the time, he can’t he worked overtime without injury, not even as much as a man can be; all too soon he dies, more missed than any member of the family.

When this is popularized the “Three Acres” can well be extended to five.

CHAPTER XXIV

SOME EXPERIMENTAL FOODS

FIFTY-EIGHT years ago Abraham Lincoln said “Population must increase rapidly, more rapidly than in former times, and ere long the most valuable of all arts will be the art of deriving subsistence from the smallest area of soil.  No community whose every member possesses this art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms.  Such community will alike be independent of crowned kings, money kings, and land kings.”