Land Tenure in Oregon. 6i months before the end of the year if either party wishes to bring the lease to a close. Clatsop county, however, reports that it is the custom to do so, and a few landowners located in different parts of the State give a like answer ; but provision for bringing the lease to a close is generally made in the contract. How the partnership property should be divided is generally specified in the lease. The crops each year are generally divided by the number of bushels at the thresher or by weights at the warehouse ; hay in the stack, by measurement. Plow- ing, cultivating or improvements are paid for by the owner, or else the lessee gives an equivalent of such things as ex- isted when he first acquired possession, as for example, 300 acres of plowed land at the beginning of the lease calls for an equal acreage plowed at its expiration. Stock is generally not divided till the close of the lease, when it is often done, in the case of sheep, by running them through a shut and making them dodge right and left alternately through a dodge-gate into separate corrals; cattle and horses, by each party choos- ing alternately. The herd is sometimes sold and the lessor first is paid the appraised value of his stock when he leased in the beginning and half the increased value received by the sale. Owners do not as a rule co-operate with their tenants in the management of their farms, but the tenant follows his own judgment as to what he shall do as long as he observes the agreement set forth in the lease. Sometimes the lessor may assist the tenant in the way of advice or he may advance him money. Artificial fertilizers are almost unknown in Oregon. The only way in which the land is fertilized is by feeding stock on the farm and hauling manure from the stables and corrals and spreading it over the fields, but in most parts of the State, nothing whatever is done to replenish the nourishment of the soil. Many farmers in Eastern Oregon require their land to be summer-fallowed every other year and cultivated during
the summer months to keep down the weeds. West of the----
