112 3Iississippi Valley Horticultural Society. 



in those semi-tropical regions where the year is divided into a wet and adry 

 season, and it is needed in countries where what should be a wet turns out 

 to be a dry season. Every portion of the United States is subject to a drought. 

 Kansas can not be reproached alone in that regard. Droughts have attacked 

 Maine, Michigan and heavily forested regions of the United States, so that 

 the woods and the very earth out of which they grew burned up like tinder. 

 The work of man on the earth is to make the most of the bounty of nature, 

 and one of the forces he is to apply is water, wherever he can find it, and to 

 the best advantage, and it makes no difTerence where that may be. While 

 it is objected that irrigation by the ditch and feed system can not be applied 

 to great tracts of land and extensive agriculture, no such objection lies 

 against its employment in horticulture, where comparatively small areas are 

 and must be employed. Let me urge your attention then to the employ- 

 ment of irrigation in horticulture, in the nursery of trees, in the manage- 

 ment, care and propagation of orchards. The finest fruits on this continent 

 are raised by its aid. The Mission grape, which has called forth the encomi- 

 ums of Spaniard, Mexican, American and Indian, grows in irrigated vine- 

 yards. Water is the life-giving principle of vegetation everywhere, and the 

 little ditch flowing along at the base of the trees in the streets of Denver 

 would be of like value during the parched summer in every city in America. 

 It must be remembered that we have nowhere a climate like that of Eng- 

 land, nowhere moisture is at all times superabundant. 



Ponds should exist on every farm for fish culture, which some day will be 

 as common as chicken raising; for watering stock in many instances, and 

 for furnishing a supijly of water for irrigatioa in the season of gardens and 

 orchards. The stream which plunges down the mountain side, casting its 

 spray on nothing but rocks, might well be directed into the thin soiled fields 

 and orchards on the lower slope, which are so susceptible to the drought as 

 are the plains of the West. The South has vast areas which should be de- 

 voted to horticulture and small farming with the advantage of a great supply 

 of running streams, which need only to be diverted into needed channels. 

 Traveling through the most barren regions of the South given over to sand 

 and pines, almost as deserted by man, note what a mass of tangled vegetation, 

 what trees and vines are found as soon as water appears. Nature gives a 

 hint here that ought to be taken. Much of this may seem fanciful to you, 

 but remember that all knowledge is at first some man's fancy, which grows 

 into steady thought, then experiment, then application ; but the subject of 

 irrigation was thought out, doubtless, by the first horticulturist, Adam, in the 

 first garden, Eden. It is as old as man on the earth. It only remains for us to 

 add in this matter, as we have in many others, to the accumulated and accu- 

 mulating wisdom of the ages. 



DISCUSSION ON IRRIGATION. 



Dr. Hape, of Georgia — I have been very much interested in the 

 paper read by the gentleman who has just taken his seat. I was 



