TWENTY FIFTH ANNUAL MEETING. 215 



AN EXPERIMENT IN KENT COUNTY. 



BY MR. M. HUNTER OF LOWELL. 



As I experimented some during the severe drouth of last summer, 1 

 will state my mode of doing the work and the benefits I received from 

 it. We have two peach orchards, one of them on as good soil as there is 

 inj Kent county, the other on light sand with a sand subsoil. As the dry 

 season continued, we found we had to do something for our sandy 

 orchard, if we were to get any fruit fit to put on the market. The fruit 

 was all drying up and becoming badly withered and shriveled. First, we 

 uncovered the roots of the trees, made a basin or reservoir large enough 

 to hold a sufficient quantity of water. We used a tank that would hold 

 all the water a good team could draw from a brook half a mile away. 

 We use from fifteen to twenty-five gallons of water, according to the 

 size of the trees. The next thing we did, as soon as the water soaked in, 

 was to put the dry sand and dust back, level up nicely around the tree, 

 stopping evaporation and holding all the moisture we had put in, and in 

 from twenty-four to thirty-six hours our withered and shriveled peaches 

 were plumped nicely and looked all right, and when the time came to 

 market them we had nicer and larger fruit of all varieties in our sand-hill 

 orchard than we had in our best orchard on good fruit land. The latter 

 was well cultivated but not irrigated nor watered. I wish to make one 

 more remark, and that is, on examination of the trees we watered I never 

 found that the water we put in entii'ely evaporated or came nearer than 

 within about three inches of the surface. This is my first experience 

 with irrigation and it netted me a large profit. 



TWO IRRIGATION EXPERIMENTS IN ALLEGAN COUNTY. 



BY SECRETARY REID. 



Concerning this matter of irrigation in actual practice, I chance to 

 know of two experiments which have been made in Allegan county, each 

 so successful as to be worth noticing. 



The first relates mainly to farm crops, but it no less demonstrates the 

 feasibility of the principle applied to fruit plantations. It was made by 

 Mr. Alfred Lonsbury of Watson, who applied water to a field of about four 

 acres. Much of Mr. Lonsbury's farm maj be very easily watered from a 

 spring brook, and all of it may be irrigated without great expense simph' 

 by damming the brook and making it operate a ram or wheel and pump. 

 There are hundreds of acres along the valley below him which may be 

 almost as readily treated. The result of his experiment this year has 

 caused him to determine to clear a lot of about fifteen acres for irrigation 

 next year if the season requires. In the field he had this year three 

 varieties of corn, but mostly two kinds of dent, one known in the county 

 as "Pony"(having small ears of very hard grain of excellent quality) and 



