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----
