236 TJRANSACTIOXS OF THE 



ANNUAL ADDRESS 



DELIVERED THURSDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 20, 1883, BY HON. JAS. H. BUDD. 



Ladies and Gentlemen : To an agricultural, community water is 

 the one great need; accompanying it we find bounteous crops and 

 prosperity; without it vegetation dies. "Where there is a high tem- 

 perature and atmospheric dryness, enormous evaporation takes place, 

 which, unless counterbalanced by moisture, parches the soil and ren- 

 ders it unfit for cultivation; but if abundance of water can be sup- 

 plied to the soil, under the above conditions, it becomes much more 

 productive than an equal area of land not so favored. The reason 

 appears to be that where great heat exists water will supply nearly 

 all the necessary food of plants. Evidently the component elements 

 of the atmosphere and water more easily separate and enter into 

 new and necessary combinations, or plants better imbibe and assimi- 

 late them where there is considerable attendant heat. 



The wonderful effects of water are evidenced in Brazil, whereas 

 across the Atlantic is seen the Great Sahara Desert, which needs but 

 moisture equal to that of South America to cover its parched sands 

 with verdure. 



From the earliest periods man has seen the necessity of supplying 

 by artificial means the moisture denied him by nature; he early 

 sought^ to turn the waters from their natural channels upon the soil 

 and thus increase its fertility. One of the earliest applications of 

 science was the construction of dams, reservoirs, canals, and aque- 

 ducts for the purposes of irrigation, and the remains of these are the 

 best monuments of an early civilization. 



THE ANTIQUITY OP IRRIGATION 



Is shown by Holy Writ. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastics 

 says: "I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them 

 of all kinds of fruits. I made me pools of water wherewith to water 

 the wood that bringeth forth trees." Moses (Deuteronomy xi, 10) 

 refers to the mode of irrigation among the Egyptians, who of all peo- 

 ple are to be praised for their early attention to the subject. Egypt 

 is in age and importance one of the greatest of all agricultural coun- 

 tries. There we find ancient irrigation brought down to modern 

 times. Formerly a dry, sandy waste, she has been reclaimed from 

 the desert by overflows of the Nile, which is well called " Father of 

 Egypt." 



Irrigation is no experiment, it was coeval with the dawn of civil- 

 ization. Around the statue of Rameses the Great is found sediment- 

 ary deposits nine feet in depth, which must have been three thousand 

 years in accumulating. Irrigation was practiced in Egypt two thou- 

 sand years before the Christian era. The mountains of Abyssinia, 



