The Irrigation Schemes of the West. 



By Gilbert M. Tucker, Editor of the Country Gentleman, read before the 

 New York State Farmers' Congress at Albany, N. Y. 



WTien a dog is about to lie for a nap, you will notice that he 

 is very apt first to go through a perfectly useless and seemingly 

 unmeaning performance hardly in character with his wonderful 

 sagacity which so closely approximates the intelligence of man. 

 He turns round and round two or three times in a little circle, 

 his head about touching his tail. Why does he do it? Simply 

 because his savage ancestors, thousands of years ago, living in 

 forests undergrown with brush and weeds, noticed that they 

 were more comfortable in their hours of repose if they first con- 

 structed in this manner a rough nest or bed. The turning round 

 was to level the plant growth and smooth it down into a sort of 

 mattress. . What was at first a perfectly reasonable and com- 

 mendable procedure, taken under the guidance of something very 

 closely resembling intelligent thought, came in time to be in- 

 stinctive — that is to say, it was a^nd is i)erformed under an un- 

 thinking impulse; ard the instinct became ultimately so fixed in 

 *he race, so runs in the doggish blood, one may say, that it domi- 

 Dites the actions of the remote descendants of those early canine 

 creatures to-day. The dog continues to perform, without neces- 

 sity, sense or purpose, on a soft carpet or a smooth wooden floor, 

 the operation which his far away ancestors performed, with very 

 good reason, in the rank undergrowth of their native forests. 

 The practice goes right on, centuries after changing circum- 

 stances have utterly destroyed its original value. ^ 



Similar occurrences of the persistence of superannuated prac- 

 tices are very frequent through the whole domain of animal life; 

 and man is not exempt. Many ideas and beliefs, once sound, con- 



