38 EEPORT OF OFFICE OF EXPERIMENT STATIONS. 



out in order to improve them or better adapt them to the different 

 conditions in other localities. These methods, or their modifications, 

 must then be introduced by means of bulletins describing them and 

 by demonstrations carried on under the supervision of men who 

 know both the scientific and the practical sides of irrigation. The 

 methods in general use in most localities are largely a blind imita- 

 tion of those used by the earliest settlers, and in many cases are 

 poorly adapted to the changes in crops grown and the amount of 

 water available for irrigation. Many localities, however, have de- 

 vised one or more highly developed methods as the result of the 

 experimentation of one or two men. In many cases, however, these 

 methods are very local in their use, and their introduction into 

 other sections will be exceedingly slow if left entirely to the settlers 

 themselves. 



(3) Although the demand for engineers for the designing and 

 construction of works will probably not be so great as in the past, 

 another and a broader field now opens for engineering ability. Econ- 

 omy in the conversance and distribution of water is necessitating 

 the replacement of old wooden structures with concrete ones; the 

 substitution of flumes, lined ditches, and underground pipe lines 

 for unlined ditches; the installation of weirs and measuring devices; 

 the use of pimping plants; and the more careful laying out, level- 

 ing, and preparation of fields. Companies are coming to see more 

 and more the need for a class of engineers who are well versed in 

 agriculture and irrigation management, as well as in location and 

 construction. 



(4) State legislation must be enacted that will favor dutj' of 

 water investigations and encourage, if not render compulsory, a 

 more economical use of water for irrigation purposes. Under most, 

 if not all, existing laws, the irrigator who prepares his land care- 

 lessly and uses the cruder methods of irrigation, and the one who 

 uses more water than he knows is best merely that he may keep his 

 full appropriation for an abnormally dry year, retain their appro- 

 priation, while the irrigator who, because of the careful preparation 

 of his lands, the use of the most improved methods of application, 

 and thorough cultivation, is able to raise as good or better crops 

 with a less amount of Avater, is not permitted to reap any reward 

 foj his extra cost and labor, but must return tlie surplus water to 

 the stream for the use of others. Under such conditions the pro- 

 gressive irrigator is not anxious to cooperate with this or any other 

 office in conducting experiments that will furnish evidence that 1 

 cubic foot per second per 100 acres constitutes beneficial use on his 

 lands, while such experiments can not be used as evidence against 

 his neighbor who uses 1 cubic foot on only TO acres of similar land. 



