STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 213 



them, and especially the old citizens here, who considered the land worn 

 out, and not good to hegin with ; been fanned to grain twenty-five years 

 before 1 had it. 



My Zinfandel grapes (so far as I sulphured them), in their third year 

 now, turned out at the rate of thirty pounds to the vine, or over six tons; 

 where [ did not sulphur them went to " nix " (?) (A lesson to be remem- 

 bered.) 



I hope you may find an item out of all this rambling talk to help make 

 up what 1 know will be a very i interesting and instructive address, Sep- 

 tember sixth. 



To recapitulate, I would say my irrigating cost in round numbers twelve 

 to fifteen dollars per day, for what I would pay Moore's Ditch Company 

 thirty dollars; that to get all there is out of clover, it should be irrigated 

 after each mowing, but I get on well with two wettings a Summer; that 

 trees and vines on this ground don't need water after they are well started, 

 but the first two years they are better for it; that clover averages about $3 

 per acre; trees, about $1, and vines, say $1 50 or $2; with my plant you 

 can see that quite a large tract could be irrigated by keeping it going dur- 

 ing the Summer months. I think I could keep 100 acres of clover in good 

 shape and 100 acres of trees or vines. 



Yours truly, 



B. PEART. 



Anaheim, Cal., August 30, 1886. 

 N. P. Chipman, Esq., Red Bluff, Cal.: 



Dear Sir : Your letter of twenty-sixth instant is just at hand, asking 

 for some particulars in regard to the experiment I made for procuring and 

 pumping water for irrigating purposes, etc. I regret to say that the under- 

 taking was not a complete success, simply because there was not water 

 enough in the ground at the spot I selected. The principle is, nevertheless, 

 a correct one, and has been successfully adopted by the City of Brooklyn, 

 New York, where, from 200 two-inch driven wells, the city of over 600,000 

 people procure all the water required. My pump was a six-inch centrif- 

 ugal, made by the San Francisco Tool Company, one of the best establish- 

 ments on the Pacific Coast. Its capacity was about 1,200 gallons per 

 minute, or about 133 inches of water. My wells were sixteen in number, 

 of three-inch galvanized iron pipe, driven to a depth of eleven feet (probably 

 too shallow), and arranged in a circle around a central receiver, from 

 which the pump drew its supply (looking very much like a great tarantula). 



My motive power was a twelve-horse portable engine, on wheels. The 

 whole cost of the plant was somewhere in the neighborhood of $2,500, and 

 would have been capable of covering thirty acres per day two and one 

 half inches deep with water. Assuming that lands required such an irri- 

 gation every thirty days, then my plant would have been capable of irri- 

 gating 900 acres once every month. 



To have purchased water stock at the present extraordinary low price 

 of our local company ($10 per share), would have cost, for 900 acres, 

 $9,000. The charge for water by our company is fifty cents per hour per 

 hundred inches — none but stockholders can get it at that — this would be 

 equal to sixty-seven cents per hour for 133 inches, the capacity of my pump, 

 and for one day of twenty-four hours would be $16. The cost of running 

 my engine for twenty-four hours would be, for fuel and engineer, about $15. 

 Water stock, however, is subject to assessments for improvements and 



