IRRIGATION FOR ORCHARD AND GARDEN. 231 



frosts late in the spring. Now, I noticed this last summer, that a 

 number of persons on the Blue river had an abundance of everything; 

 their orchards bore well and their garden vegetables were not injured 

 by the frosts in May. Have you noticed anything in your country 

 that would indicate that a consideral)le amount of water would have 

 a tendency to prevent injury by frost? 



Mr. Fort — I have never noticed anything of that kind there; I 

 have been told that in New York along Long Island Sound they 

 claim the moisture coming off the ocean tends to prevent any damage 

 that might result from frost. We do not have enough moisture out 

 where I live to judge of that question. 



The President — There is one point I would like to ask Mr. Fort 

 about, that is the extent of irrigation in the state. How many miles 

 of ditch are already constructed, and how many acres of land can be 

 irrigated when those under construction are completed? 



Mr. Fort — The canals now constructed and under construction 

 will irrigate a million acres; canals proposed, another million acres; 

 the total irrigable area of the state — that which can be irrigated by 

 canals, I mean — will not exceed three million acres. There are 49,- 

 500,000 acres in the state, so we have only forty-six and a half mill- 

 ions of acres yet to irrigate. And there is one thing I want to 

 speak of that the i>eople of Nebraska ought to take up, and that is 

 windmill irrigation. We have 46,000,000 acres yet to irrigate, and 

 there are probably not over 2,000,000 acres that will be irrigated by 

 canals within the next twenty years, while there might be two or three 

 or four or five million acres irrigated by pumping plants within the 

 same length of time. 



The President — Can you give briefly some figures, say for five 

 acres. What would it cost to put in a plant that would irrigate that 

 amount of land profitably ? 



Mr. Fort — That varies so much that it would be hard to tell. I 

 visited about fifty pumping plants on the Platte river. One man was 

 pumping from a well sixty feet deep three miles west of Paxton, and 

 he told me that his entire plant did not cost him over $100; that did 

 not include his labor; they don't count labor anything at the present 

 time. Where the depth is not over 100 feet, in a good many cases 

 pumping plants can be worked cheaper than you can buy water from 

 these canal companies. Mr. Wilcox spoke about winter irrigation. I 



