date, but results have proved highly encouraging. In Southern Arizona there are several companies and considerably over one thousand ostriches. The climate is as conducive to the plumed giants as that of South Africa; and they thrive amazingly well on the rich alfalfa, requiring no shelter and but little care, besides yielding a substantial plucking once every eight months.

Of the cereals grown, barley, corn, and wheat are the most common. The two former are cut in the straw and fed to stock. In both Territories, particularly in the towns and mining settlements, there is an increasing demand for wheat, and home industry is further encouraged by the high prices of Eastern and Northern flour.

The raising of the sugar-beet promises to develop into a leading industry. Sugar factories have been started in both Territories, the largest being in Carlsbad, New Mexico, where nearly 2,000 acres are devoted to beet culture..

Watermelons, muskmelons, strawberries, blackberries, and all kinds of vegetables are staple products, and vie with the finest varieties of the East. As no finer climate exists for the propagation of grapes, viticulturists have enjoyed a large measure of the prevailing fertility of the reclaimed lands. The grapes, with and without seeds, are heavy in saccharine, and include such vinous favorites as the Mission, which was brought into New Mexico early in the eighteenth century by the Catholic missionaries, the Muscat, the Hamburg, the Malvoisie, and others.

Other horticultural possibilities, notably in the warmer portions, include date-palms, almonds, nectarines, olives, apricots, figs, oranges, and lemons. Several hundred date-palm trees have been successfully raised at the experimental station near Phoenix, Arizona, and flourish as they did of old in Algiers, Egypt, and Arabia. Almond trees yield plenteously, but, like the lemon, they are susceptible to the spring frosts. Apricots ripen early in May, nearly a month in advance of the California fruit. Figs grow profusely, but the market is too distant for them to be shipped fresh. In the Salt River Valley oranges and lemons of a superior quality are raised in abundance. In common with other Arizona fruits, they are exempt from the scale insect, and present a bright and wholesome appearance, being much sought after in the large cities.

If irrigation did nothing more than to encourage the growth of shade trees, hedges, and shrubbery in the Southwestern towns, its service would still be great. Much interest has been taken, particularly in Southern Arizona, in beautifying the streets and parks with the foliage of two zones. The visitor sees a pleasing arrangement of the stately ash and

cottonwood, the dreamy pepper, the lofty date-palm, the locust, and the desert willow, besides quantities of dwarf palms and rose-bushes.

Though the present scheme of irrigation rests on a sound basis, it is still little more than a beginning. All available water not in actual use should be stored; and for this purpose there is need of many dams and reservoirs, with which to increase the water supply in those canals which now carry a deficient volume in the dry season, as well as to provide a sufficiently large and constant supply enabling the restoration of further areas of arid wastes to be proceeded with. Upon the storage of the flood waters depends to a very large extent the future development of agriculture in both Territories.

Throughout Arizona and New Mexico there are many natural storage sites to absorb the regular drain of the mountains, and already several important projects have been started to erect the necessary dams. On the Gila River of Arizona, at a point called The Buttes, fourteen miles from Florence, a dam 150 feet high will store enough water to cover 174,000 acres to a depth of one foot, or, in other words, will impound 174,000 acre-feet. At Riverside, a dam of the same dimensions will impound still more; while at San Carlos, on the Apache Reservation, is a site for a reservoir easily capable of impounding 361,000 acre-feet. The socalled Horseshoe Reservoir, on the Rio Verde, has an estimated capacity of 204,935 acre-feet, sufficient to irrigate 50,000 acres. It is taking nearly $1,000,000 to construct the Agua Fria River system. The canal will be thirty miles long and forty-five feet in width, and the estimated area that will be irrigated is 150,000 acres. The grandest scheme yet devised is the Tonto Basin project in Salt River Valley, sixty miles northeast of Phoenix, where it is purposed, at an expense of $2,500,000, to dam a gorge in the cañon of Salt River and form an artificial lake of eighteen square miles. Into this basin will be carried the "run off" from a drainage area of 6,000 square miles, most of which is in the region of greatest precipitation in Arizona. The capacity will only be limited by the height of the dam; but the amount planned is 757,000 acre-feet. About 300,000 acres will thus become fit for cultivation.

Good sites are obtainable in the four corners of New Mexico, notably the Canadian River country in the northeast, the Pecos Valley in the southeast, the Gila and the Colorado River in the west, the San Juan River in the northwest, and also throughout the Rio Grande Valley from El Paso to the Colorado line. It is stated that the flood-waters from the great watershed of the White Mountains in Eastern New Mexico are sufficient to irrigate 1,500,000 acres.

The question of the public and private control of irrigation is exciting great attention just now, particularly among the citizens of the respective Territories, who see in the present great development of private systems an argument not only for Statehood, but also for public control and management. Mr. Vernon L. Clark, Immigration Commissioner for Maricopa County, Arizona, writing on November 29, 1901, said:

I believe that the admission of this Territory to Statehood will have much to do with the future development of irrigation in Arizona, and vice versa. We have, in this Territory, many millions of acres of the most fertile land in the world, providing we can get water upon it. In the point of State control or the handling by private enterprise of the irrigation systems there seems to be little choice. We have room here for the accommodation of many millions more people, if we can find ways and means of storing the immense volume of water that goes to waste each spring. Not only is the storage of water of immense value to the agricultural country, but it will mean much to the future development of the mining industry. There are hundreds and thousands of rich prospects and mines in Arizona and New Mexico which are now idle because of the lack of water. With water storage we can give a perpetual supply to these mines.

Mr. Laurence H. Hamilton, Secretary of the Phoenix and Maricopa County Board of Trade, writing on November 12, 1901, said:

Extended irrigation will certainly be an argument in favor of admitting Arizona to Statehood. With Arizona a State, there should be little difficulty in securing government aid in building reservoirs and the consequent reclamation of millions of acres of land. It is my private opinion that government control of irrigation would be profitable and satisfactory. There is, however, at present, a difference of opinion on that point.

Governor Miguel A. Otero, of New Mexico, who is one of the most enthusiastic advocates of Statehood, said, in a letter dated November 5, 1901:

New Mexico, of course, is very much interested in the subject of irrigation, and we believe that Congress should do something for the arid West in order to reclaim our land. As a Territory, we feel that we can do little in this direction; and this is one of the arguments that we have advanced for speedy admission.

What has been done by private enterprise in reclaiming the mesas and the semi-arid wastes is but a slight indication of what could be done by public control, either national or Territorial. It is suggested that Congress should build reservoirs in the more promising districts and charge a minimum water-rent. No doubt, in some instances, this might be practical, though it would hardly be a safe precedent to establish. It might be successful in the Gila Reservation in Arizona, where over 200,000 of the 350,000 acres could be easily made irrigable, affording an unfailing future support for the 4,000 Indians and for a large white

settler population besides. Still better, the national Government might place the reclamation of its lands under the United States Geological Survey, subject to Civil Service control, and authorize that body to proceed with the reclamation of the public domain, and, as soon as a given area was reclaimed, to sell it to settlers. With the revenue thus acquired it would have sufficient means to continue its labor without any further aid from Congress. Again, the Government might cede the arid lands to the Territories in which they lie, so that the question of disposition and development might be one of local legislation. In connection with this suggestion may be cited the views of Governor N. O. Murphy of Arizona, in his annual report for 1901:

Unless it be assumed at the outset that the people are incapable of self-government, there can be no argument whatever against permitting them to take over the public domain and use it as a basis for obtaining capital for the construction of reservoirs. The entire opposition to the suggestion lies in the assumption that the people are essentially corrupt, and that the lawmakers whom they would direct to represent them would be perversely dishonest; in the assumption that it would be impossible for Congress to devise a measure which would properly protect the people from spoliation; and, finally, in the assumption that capital is always dishonest and should have no consideration or encouragement. Happily, such inferential arguments are confined to but a few, and have little popularity in Arizona.

In no part of our country has permanent wealth been created more rapidly than in the reclaimed portions. Thanks to irrigation, the Southwest is beginning to receive a tiny share of that vast tide of immigration which for so many years has flowed into Chicago only to drift toward the Northwest. With the powerful inducements now offered, it behooves the boards of trade, the various corporations, and, most of all, the two great railroad systems to make every possible attempt to attract foreigners to these Territories, besides showing to the men of the North and the East, to men of large means as well as to men of small means, including that great number of people who by reason of weak lungs and otherwise poor health cannot put forth their best efforts in the places where they are now living, the wonderful possibilities of this blossoming desert, where the sun is ever smiling and the rays are tempered by a dry and invigorating atmosphere. ROBERT M. BARKER.

COLLEGIATE CONDITIONS IN THE UNITED STATES.

MORE than a dozen years have passed since Mr. Bryce wrote as follows in his famous treatise on "The American Commonwealth":

But if I may venture to state the impression which the American universities have made upon me, I will say that while of all the institutions of the country they are those of which the Americans speak most modestly, and indeed deprecatingly, they are those which seem to be at this moment making the swiftest progress, and to have the brightest promise for the future. They are supplying exactly those things which European critics have hitherto found lacking to America; and they are contributing to her political as well as to her contemplative life elements of inestimable worth. I

Since Mr. Bryce thus wrote, the old century has closed and the twentieth has begun. At the beginning of the new century, there may be found more ample and significant evidence of the truth of Mr. Bryce's remarks and of the justice of his prophecy than existed when they were offered. A statement of the credits and debits, the strong and weak points, of the system of higher education in the United States would include an account of many significant elements. Of a few of these elements I wish to write.

(1) The interest in the cause of higher education has become more general, and, having become more general, it has, with many persons, become great. The college world is no longer a world apart. That index of what always interests people the newspaper-indicates the enlargement of the field. The daily paper gives far more space to the colleges than formerly. But the interest of the people is indicated in a more fundamental form. In more than half of all the States, and, in fact, in each of the newer States, what is known as the State university has become a necessary and normal part of the organization of public education. In not a few of these States, the university-which in certain ways can be appropriately called the crown of the whole scheme of public education has a larger number of students, expends more money each year, and enjoys larger influence and greater prestige than all the other collegiate institutions of the State combined. However true this

1 Vol. ii., p. 553.