70 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



the application of our more tborowgh system of cultivation to make it 

 produce to the utmost of its capacity. 



A succession of dryer seasons and comparative failure of crops have 

 served to prove to us that, although more thorough cultivation will very 

 much increase and render more certain our annual productions, j-et to 

 secure an abundance, and to place us independent of drought and safe 

 from its consequences, we must adopt the S3-stem of the Mission Fathers, 

 and extend them over the whole agricultui-al portions of the State. 



We are indebted to a few members of the Legislature of eighteen hun- 

 dred and sixty-two for a short statute, extending the same powers to 

 condemn private lands for public use possessed by railroad corporations 

 to ditch and canal companies organized for the purpose of irrigation or 

 water power, or for the conveyance of water for mining or manufactur- 

 ing purposes. 



Under that law companies have been organized in different portions of 

 the State tor irrigating purposes, and among the most advanced and 

 successful are the Cacheville and Woodland companies, in Yolo County, 

 with particular reference to which localities the laAV, though general in 

 its application, was originally framed and passed. 



There are in Yolo County five main ditches, taking the water from 

 Cache Creek in as many different places, with an aggregate length of 

 twenty-five miles, Avhich, with their collateral branches, when completed, 

 will be capable of irrigating over one hundred thousand acres of land; 

 but only the two above named are so far completed as to show any 

 material results. 



To Judge Hutton, of the Cacheville company, and Kicholas WyeoflF, of 

 the Woodbind company, we are indebted for some verj^ interesting and 

 important facts, to which we would call particular attention. These 

 gentlemen have both been practical farmers in that count}" since eighteen 

 hundred and fifty or eighteen hundred and fifty-one, and botb being 

 close, careful, and intelligent observers — made more so probably by the 

 trials to which all our farming community have been subject for a few 

 years past — their experience becomes of the greatest value to the agri- 

 cultural interests throughout the State. To show how nearl}^ alike the 

 benefits of irrigation are in both sections, we will give short extracts 

 Irom the letters of each, addressed to the Secretary of this Board, and 

 which will appear in the body of the transactions ibr the 3'ear. Judge 

 Hutton, whose experience in irrigation extends back to eighteen hun- 

 dred and sixty, when the main ditch of that company Avas built, says: 



"It has been found by practical experience that the advantages to 

 crops from irrigation are as follows, as near as can be ascertained : 



"That in the most favorable season the yield of small grains, and 

 especially such as are late sown, may be increased by a judicious system 

 of ii-rigation from one fourth to one third in quantity; in ordinary sea- 

 sons from one third to one half; and in the dryest seasons, when the 

 crops fail entirely without it, by irrigation we get the ordinary yield — 

 say from thirty to fifty bushels per acre. And as to corn, vegetables, 

 and fruit, Avhat cannot be successfully produced without irrigation, by it 

 are grown in great abundance and excellent in quality." 



Mr. Wycoff says : 



"That even in good seasons, an irrigating ditch through a section of 

 land, like the one in which I live, Woodland and vicinity, will make an 



