IMPORTANT QUESTIONS RELATING TO IRRIGABLE LANDS. 89 
In the indication of specific areas as irrigable on the accompanying 
map of Utah, it must be considered that the selections made are but ten- 
tative; the areas chosen are supposed to be, under all the circumstances, 
the most available; but each community will settle this problem for itself, 
and the circumstances whieh will control any particular selection cannot 
be foretold. It is believed that the selections made will be advantageous 
to the settler, by giving him the opinions of men who have made the sub- 
ject a study, and will save many mistakes. 
The history of this subject in Utah is very instructive. The greater 
number of people in the territory who engage in agriculture are organized 
into ecclesiastical bodies, trying the experiment of communal institutions. 
In this way the communal towns are mobile. This mobility is increased 
by the fact that the towns are usually laid out on Government lands, and 
for a long time titles to the land in severalty are not obtained by the people. 
It has been the custom of the church to send a number of people, organized 
as a community, to a town site on some stream to be used in the cultivation 
of the lands, and rarely has the first selection made been final. Luxuriant 
vegetation has often tempted the settlers to select lands at too great an 
altitude, and many towns have been moved down stream. Sometimes 
selections have been made too far away from the sources of the streams, 
and to increase the supply of water, towns have been moved up stream. 
Sometimes lands of too great slope have been chosen, and here the waters 
have rapidly cut deep channels and destroyed the fields. Sometimes alka- 
line lands are selected and abandoned, and sometimes excessively sandy 
lands have caused a change to be made; but the question of the best sites 
for the construction of works for controlling and distributing the water has 
usually determined the selection of lands within restricted limits. 
To a very slight extent indeed have artificial conditions controlled in 
Utah; the several problems have generally been solved by the considera- 
tion of physical facts. 
INCREASE IN THE WATER SUPPLY. 
Irrigation has been practiced in different portions of the Arid Region 
for the last twenty-five or thirty years, and the area cultivated by this 
12AR 
