EXPERIMENT STATION RECORD. 



Y<>i.. XVII. ( October, L905. No. 2. 



Among the presidential addresses at the South African meeting of 

 the British Association the pasl summer was our on irrigation, which 

 is especially worthy of note on account of its treatment of the larger 

 irrigation problems of the world. It brought together, furthermore, a 

 large amount of information regarding the prominent features and 

 conditions of irrigation in the principal irrigated countries. The 

 address was delivered before the section for engineering by Sir C. Scott 

 Moncrieff, president of the section. The speaker was competent to 

 discuss the subject from his extended experience in the principal 

 irrigated countries, and the study he has made of it from an economic 

 as well as an engineering standpoint. 



The paper served to show anew the enormous proportions which 

 irrigation has attained, and the scientific basis which it has been placed 

 upon in some of the countries of the Old World. It brought out in a 

 rather striking way the similarity between the problems which are 

 occupying special attention in other countries and those which are 

 uppermost in this country, such as the pumping of water, utilization 

 of artesian wells and of small reservoirs, the necessity for drainage as 

 an accompaniment of irrigation, and the basis of payment for water. 

 It also gave some striking illustrations of the colonization in India and 

 elsewhere of vast tracts of country which, previous to the installation 

 of irrigation works, were desert wastes. 



/The speaker characterized the irrigation in India and Egypt as being 

 on the largest scale, that of Italy as having the most highly finished 

 works and careful water distribution, and that of America as exhibit- 

 ing rapid progress and bold engineering. ** It is in India that irriga- 

 tion on the largest scale is to be found," the Great Plains of northern 

 India being peculiarly well adapted to it. and the teeming population 

 absolutely dependent upon it for maintenance. A- shown by the 

 recent report of an irrigation commission, there are now under irriga- 

 tion in that country something over forty-four million acres, or ten 

 times the area at present irrigated in this country. 



The greatest of its canals, discharging from 3,000 to 10,500 cubic 

 feet of water per second, was built to carry water into a tract entirely 

 desert and unpopulated. It was opened in L892 and enlarged, and ten 



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