Excerpt from The New Agriculture: Or the Waters Led Captive

In announcing the publication of this book the publishers would state that the claims of the author in behalf of his discoveries and methods seemed, when first presented to our attention, well nigh incredible. It was not until after a personal examination, at the "Home on the Hillside, " of Mr. Cole's system of cultivation and an inspection of some of the wonderful resultant products, that we became thoroughly convinced that he has practically substantiated the claims set forth in this volume.

He could not have selected a more unpromising piece of land for testing the merits of "The New Agriculture." It was a steep and sterile hillside of Allegany hardpan, thinly covered with a soil, which was surface-washed and gullied by heavy rains and sun-baked in dry weather.

His system of culture based upon underground irrigation and fertilization maintained constantly and uniformly the year around by means of his own devising, after thirty years of investigation and study, has transferred this waste of ground, which nobody thought could be made profitably productive, into, comparatively speaking, a Garden of Eden. He simply makes "The New Agriculture" a willing Handmaid to Nature. He gathers and conserves in his trenches or subterranean reservoir's all the waters from dews, rains and melting snows, which, after equable filtration through the soil, are released at the foot of the slope in a never - failing stream of pure water at spring temperature. It would seem that not more than one-fifth of this fertilizing moisture is absorbed by a maximum crop. Fungus, that deadly foe to root growth, is completely eliminated.

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