growing. In whatever manner the lands may have been secured, the existence of these big ranches is one of the present day obstacles to the progress of grain farming, the advance of which was the chief cause of the change from open ranging to the new method of stock raising.
The profits in wheat growing on the volcanic soils of Washington, Idaho and Oregon are so generous, under a regime of cheap lands, that every extension of railway facilities has promptly brought fresh areas under the plough. Lands which w'ere once considered of no value except for their bunch grass pasturage are found to produce with proper "dry land "methods of cultivation, bountiful crops of hard wheat. To be sure, a considerable area in Washington and a much larger area in Oregon lies at an elevation too great for maturing the common varieties of cereals. Yet, even these lands must not lightly be condemned to range uses forever. The agricultural colleges and stations are sedulously engaged in plant-breeding experiments which are likely to solve what is now a very real problem. If they succeed, as in time they doubtless will, we may look for a vast increase in the cultivated area, east of the Cascades, within a reasonable term of years. For not only dry farming methods, but new irrigation projects, of which a number are already in operation, will steadily encroach upon the area of the stock ranges until through the rise of land values, or through
of Burns, Oregon, who personally examined land office and court records bearing upon the subject.
