THE MONTHLY BULLETIN. 469 



and tliey all know that to-day — know what I told them over and over 

 again years ago, and now they come to me and say, it happened exactly 

 as you told us it would, and our land has gone because we neglected to 

 realize what was happening and neglected to do anything for it. 



Mr. Aaronsohn. The question of overflowing lands is not as danger- 

 ous with us, as we do not have any great quantity of water, and then 

 there is another question. The art of irrigation cannot be acquired 

 from the very start ; it takes a long time for a farmer to learn how to 

 use water on his land and in our country, where we have been engaged 

 in agriculture thousands of years, nearly every farmer who has water 

 at his disposal for irrigation knows how to make use of it, and, therefore, 

 the danger of overflowing the land and bringing in too much alkali is 

 not a problem with us. Still, in some parts of our country, especially 

 in the southern parts of Palestine and upon the Dead Sea wastes of the 

 Sahara, there are large quantities of salt in the water, and it happens 

 very often that patches of land have been cultivated for a number of 

 years that are so full of alkali that it does not pay to put any more crops 

 on them. But then the natives have a very simple way of getting rid of 

 the alkali. As you know, land is very cheap there ; they rent this land 

 for a year or two and wait until they have plenty of rainfall, and then 

 the rain washes out the alkali from the soil, and generally our engineers 

 and farmers come to this result — that before they begin to study a 

 system of irrigation, when they come to realize that it pays to wait for 

 the rains to drain ofl' the allcali rather than to spend. the same time, 

 besides the great expense, to establish a system of drainage. Irrigation 

 wdthout drainage is considered in our country by the most progressive 

 farmers as a very dangerous thing and leads to overflowing of lands, 

 making it too rich in alkali. This idea of all irrigation engineers in 

 theory has a splendid underlying principle, that they have to take care 

 of the drainage question before they bring in water for irrigation. 



Mr. Hutchinson. Speaking of the benefits of drainage, I only want 

 to say a few words. That is, I was talking with the gentlemen to whom 

 Mr. Dore delivered his raisins this year — Griffin & Skelley Company. 

 His raisins were the best of any delivered to the packing-house this 

 year. If Mr. Dore were here he could tell you something about the 

 matter. I do not know what has been done previously, but this year, 

 whether it came from the effect of his taking the best care or not I do 

 not know, but I am perfectly willing to give the drainage of his lands 

 the credit, and if many of our men living here would drain their lands, 

 it would certainly be a very great advantage to all lands adjoining. 

 We have heard Miss Hatch tell us about hers. I have heard her on 

 several occasions talking of drainage, but she couldn't get any of her 

 neighbors to take hold of the work. I am sorry she did not say Avhat the 

 damage was, but it M'as immense. I understand that only a few years 

 l)efore she was offered for that place of hers sixty-five thousand dollars. 

 I think she sold it for about five thousand. I am not certain, I haven't 

 her permission to say, but I Avant to show the people the difference 



