84 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



undertaking in the Arkansas valley, that the cost of construction of the canal 

 is remarkably light, compared with what must be the cost in Colorado, New 

 Mexico, and other mountainous districts. The Garden City canal probably 

 cost considerably more than $100 per mile. But it was made without ma- 

 chinery; and a number of depressions were crossed, requiring considerable 

 filling, which would not have been necessary had its course been laid with 

 skill. As has been said, the canal of the " Kansas Irrigating, Water Power 

 and Manufacturing Company" is being made at a cost of $250 per mile; and 

 this is twenty-two feet wide and four feet deep, while that of the Garden 

 City Company is but eight feet wide and two feet deep. 



The Calusa canal, in Piedmont, Italy, is twenty miles long, as is to be the 

 Kansas canal, and the capacity is about the same, the Calusa canal being 

 eighteen feet broad at the bottom, twenty-six feet at the surface of the water, 

 and having a depth of three and a half feet. Its capacity is the irrigation 

 of 18,000 acres. That of the Kansas canal is to be 21,600 acres. The Ca- 

 lusa canal cost $8,500 per mile. In this statement of its cost, however, there 

 appears to be included that of fifty-nine bridges, twenty-six aqueducts and 

 two tunnels. In the cost of the Kansas canal — $250 per mile — no account 

 is taken of any such accessories. The future may develop the necessity of 

 bringing some of these things into the estimates. 



In the Arkansas valley, too, the labor of irrigation, of attending the fields 

 and conducting the water upon crops, must be far less than in hilly districts. 

 Owing to the flatness of the land, large areas can be much more quickly and 

 completely flooded than where the land is more sloping. 



The area of land irrigated, or rather partially irrigated, in Sequoyah 

 county the present year, did not exceed 100 acres. There are several thou- 

 sand acres now plowed and ready for irrigation within the reach of the 

 ditches, which will afibrd water early next spring; the price of water fixed 

 by the irrigation companies is one dollar per acre for the year, the water to 

 be brought by the ditch-owners to the farms of those to be furnished with it. 



The spring rise in the Arkansas begins from the first to the middle of 

 May. The river keeps up high until September or October. It is lowest 

 through the winter and early in the spring. It is the observation of those 

 who have become interested in these irrigation experiments, that there is 

 seldom less than five hundred cubic feet of water in the channel and within 

 reach of the irrigation canals in the upper counties in the Arkansas valley 

 in Kansas. Last April, at Garden City, for four or five days, there was less 

 than that volume, owing to a strong south wind prevailing for that time. 

 But through the season of irrigation a much larger volume of water flows 

 through that portion of the river. 



At some distance below Sequoyah county the water sometimes disappears, 

 and is not seen at all above the sandy bed of the river. This occurred last 

 spring, as far up as at a point thirty miles below Garden City. But last 

 spring being a time of general drouth in Colorado and New Mexico, the Ar- 



