Irrigalion in Horticulture. Ill 



made near Fort Lyon, and then the hole was abandoned. Something may 

 yet come out of this project; it was a scheme worth trying. The soil in this 

 territory is good ; it only lacks water to make it very productive. In some 

 way, somehow, and at some time, this water will be found and set free, and 

 when this is done a new empire will be opened for settlement and cultiva- 

 tion — a land already peneti'ated by several railroads into the lap of the East 

 and the West. When that country is watered, groves will spring up as they 

 do now in Denver and San Francisco, and the climate further east will be 

 ameliorated, and the rainfall will be greater and more evenly distributed, 

 less drought and fewer torrents and tornadoes. A tornado, or a " twister," let 

 us define it now for the first time, is a loafer and an assassin, the dead beat 

 and the Guiteau of the plains, born of idleness on a parched, empty and lazy 

 ]>rairie, and nurtured in the same hot and hellish air that makes the whisky- 

 fed cowboy a devil incarnate. Irrigate the plains and you gibbet both the 

 human £.nd the atmospheric fiend, and the plains will be irrigated; if not 

 this year, then ten years hence, as Damascus, and Palestine, and India have 

 been irrigated — millions of acres, and by " Pagans " thousands of years ago. 

 Damascus is called the " Eye of the East," and a thousand other poetic names. 

 The cyclopedia says the river Abana " is the life of Damascus, and has made 

 it perennial." Its system of irrigation is "apparently of high antiquity; ca- 

 nals are led ott' from it at different elevations above the city, and carried far 

 and wide over the surrounding plain, converting what would otherwise be a 

 parched desert into a paradise." Are we less wise, less euterjorising than 

 that remote people whom we now call barbarians? 



It may be objected that this papsr and the subject matter embraced in it 

 refers exclusively to the arid regions of the West, but every region of our 

 country is embraced within the domain of this Society. If he has been 

 called a benefactor to the race who makes two spears of grass grow where 

 <jne grew before, what may be said of him who makes not only grass but 

 Howers and fruits grow, where nothing but grass grew before ? I regard my 

 subject, even with the thus hmited application of it, as of the first import- 

 ance to this Society and every member of it. To extend our view, however, 

 is irrigation of value only on the great Western plains and mountains? Is 

 it not worthy of investigation and experiment everywhere ? Most certainly; 

 and nothing stands in the way of that investigation and experiment except, 

 first, ignorance of the results of irrigation elsewhere, and in other ages; 

 and, second, a sort of superstition akin to that which led some of the Scotch 

 covenanters, who opposed the introduction of fanning mills, because it was 

 the province of the Lord, and him alone, to raise the wind. We are prone 

 to think that it is the Lord's business to also raise the water, or rather let it 

 fall. But on the same principle, why not depend on nature for fertilizers? 

 Irrigation is the art of saving and applying water in quantity to cultivated 

 grovmd when it is needed. It is, therefore, of value in every country where 

 water does not fall from the clouds when and where it is needed. And where 

 is the country that rain can always be depended upon ? Irrigation is needed 



