ess
than nothing.

We can not stop long enough to look it up, but from the green color on
our national map that betokens the forest reserves, and from our own
personal knowledge of the deserts, swamps, barrens and rocks that we
have seen, we make the estimate that _fully one-third_ of the total area
of the United States is incapable of supporting the husbandman who
depends for his existence upon tillage of the soil. People may talk and
write about "dry farming" all they please, but I wish to observe that
from Dry-Farming to Success is a long shot, with many limbs in the way.
When it rains sufficiently, dry farming is a success; but otherwise it
is not; and we heartily wish it were otherwise.

The logical conclusion of our land that is utterly unfit for agriculture
is a great area of land available for occupancy by valuable wild
animals. Every year the people of the United States are wasting
uncountable millions of pounds of venison, because we are neglecting our
opportunities for producing it practically without cost. Imagine for a
moment bestowing upon land owners the ability to stock with white-tailed
and Indian sambar deer all the wild lands of the United States that are
suitable for those species, and permitting only bucks over one year of
age to be shot. With the does even reasonably protected, the numerical
results in annual pounds of good edible flesh fairly challenges the
imagination.

About six years ago, Mr. C.C. Worthington's deer, in his fenced park, at
Shawnee-on-Delaware, Pennsylvania, became so numerous and so burdensome
that he opened his fences and permitted about one thousand head to go
free.

We are losing each year a very large and valuable asset in the
intangible form of a million hardy deer that we might have raised but
did not! Our vast domains of wooded mountains, hills and valleys lie
practically untenanted by big game, save in a few exceptional spots. We
lose because we are lawless. We lose because we are too improvident to
conserve large forms of wild life unless we are compelled to do so by
the stern edict of the law! The law-breakers, the game-hogs, the
conscienceless doe-and-fawn slayers are everywhere! Ten per cent of all
the grown men now in the United States are to-day poachers, thieves and
law-breakers, or else they are liable to become so to-morrow. If you
doubt it, try risking your new umbrella unprotected in the next mixed
company of one hundred men that you encounter, in such a