The season had been unusually dry, as had been the one before, and the people were fearing famine.  Only 2.44 inches of rain had fallen at Tsingtao between the end of the preceding October and our visit, May 21st, and hundreds of such temporary wells had been or were being dug all along both sides of the two hundred and fifty miles of railway, and nearly all to be filled when the crop on the ground was irrigated, to release the land for one to follow.  The homes are in villages a mile or more apart and often the holdings or rentals are scattered, separated by considerable distances, hence easy portability is the key-note in the construction of this irrigating outfit.  The bucket is very light, simply a woven basket waterproofed with a paste of bean flour.  The windlass turns like a long spool on a single pin and the standard is a tripod with removable legs.  Some wells we saw were sixteen or twenty feet deep and in these the water was raised by a cow walking straight away at the end of a rope.

The amount and distribution of rainfall in this province, as indicated by the mean of ten years’ records at Tsingtao, obtained at the German Meteorological Observatory through the courtesy of Dr. B. Meyermanns, are given in the table in which the rainfall of Madison, Wisconsin, is inserted for comparison.

Mean monthly rainfall.  Mean rainfall In 10 days. 
Tsingtao, Madison, Tsingtao,  Madison,
Inches.    Inches.   Inches.    Inches. 
January    .394     1.56      .131      .520
February   .240     1.50      .080      .500
March      .892     2.12      .297      .707
April     1.240     2.62      .413      .840
May       1.636     3.62      .545     1.207
June      2.702     4.10      .901     1.866
July      6.637     3.90     2.212     1.300
August    5.157     3.21     1.719     1.070
September 2.448     3.15      .816     1.050
October   2.258     2.42      .753      .807
November   .398     1.78      .132      .593
December   .682     1.77      .227      .590
------------
Total    24.682    31.65

While Shantung receives less than 25 inches of rain during the year, against Wisconsin’s more than 31 inches, the rainfall during June, July and August in Shantung is nearly 14.5 inches, while Wisconsin receives but 11.2 inches.  This greater summer rainfall, with persistent fertilization and intense management, in a warm latitude, are some of the elements permitting Shantung today to feed 38,247,900 people from an area equal to that upon which Wisconsin is yet feeding but 2,333,860.  Must American agriculture ultimately feed sixteen people where it is now feeding but one?  If so, correspondingly more intense and effective practices must follow, and we can neither know too well nor too early what these Old World people have been driven to do; how they have succeeded, and how we and they may improve upon their practices and lighten the human burdens by more fully utilizing physical forces and mechanical appliances.