EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Vol. X. No. 3. 



In the appropriation act for this Department for the current fiscal 

 year ten thousand dollars was provided by Congress "for the pur- 

 pose of collecting from agricultural colleges, agricultural experiment 

 stations, and other sources, including the employment of practical 

 agents, valuable information and data on the subject of irrigation, and 

 publishing the same in bulletin form." The general supervision of this 

 work has been assigned to the Director of this Office. It was decided 

 that the best way in which the Office could get the advice which it 

 needed for the formulation of plans of work along the most useful lines 

 was to call a conference in the irrigated region of experiment station 

 officers and irrigation engineers who had been most largely engaged 

 in recent years in making experimental inquiries in irrigation, or in 

 dealing with the administrative and practical problems involved in the 

 use of water for irrigation in the West. This conference was held at 

 Denver, July 12 and 13, 1898, and was attended by experiment station 

 officers from California, Nebraska, Colorado, Utah, Montana, and 

 Wyoming, and the State engineers of Wyoming and Colorado. 



After careful consideration it has been determined to confine the 

 work on irrigation for the present to two general lines: (1) The colla- 

 tion and publication of information regarding the laws and institutions 

 of the irrigated region in their relation to agriculture, and (2) the pub- 

 lication of available information regarding the use of irrigation waters 

 in agriculture as shown by actual experience of farmers and by exper- 

 imental investigations, and the encouragement of further investigations 

 in this line by the experiment stations. 



The proposed investigation of the actual amounts of water used by 

 successful farmers in different parts of the irrigated region on different 

 soils and in the growing of different crops is believed to be a funda- 

 mental inquiry. If sufficient funds are provided for its accomplish- 

 ment on an adequate scale, it will furnish the basis not only for just 

 court decisions and the equitable apportionment of water by adminis- 

 trative officers, but also for the more systematic and scientific inquiries 

 with a view to the determination of the minimum amounts of water 

 required for successful agriculture under different conditions, and the 

 maximum area which can be properly irrigated in any given locality. 



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