IRRIGABLE LANDS OF THE VALLEY OF THE SEVIER. 143 
remain unwatered much longer than others, and the tendency always is to 
get as much water as possible—each farmer fearing a deficiency of water 
and wasting its surplus. Experience on the part of the watermasters and 
a more and more settled habit in the lands themselves gradually diminish 
this source of loss and create economy. Far better results, therefore, may 
ordinarily be anticipated in old lands than in new. Better results, also, are 
found where circumstances render difficult or impracticable the abandon- 
ment of old fields for new, and this is ordinarily in those portions where 
the water is nearly or quite sufticient for all the irrigable land, and where 
all the irrigable land is taken up. 
Recurring, then, to the inquiry as to the amount of land which a cubic 
foot per second of running water will irrigate, this area is in many of the 
new lands as low as 40 acres, and it seldom exceeds 80 acres with the old 
lands. Probably there are very few regions in the world where the demand 
of the soil for water is so great as here where the supply is so small. In 
California a cubic foot of water is said to be capable of irrigating more than 
a hundred acres, in India 200, and in Spain and Italy a much larger area. 
The reason is obvious. It is the direct consequence of the extreme aridity 
of the climate of Utah. The irrigating capacity of the unit of water is 
even less in the southern counties of Utah than in those around Great Salt 
Lake. Mr. Gilbert’s estimate of 100 acres for this last locality being 
accepted as the best that can be hoped for, it will not be rating the factor 
too low to say that 80 acres is the best that can be hoped for in the valley 
of the Sevier. The present factor will not, I am convinced, have a higher 
average value than 50 acres. 
The total acreage, therefore, which can be irrigated in the drainage 
system of the Sevier by the present system of watering and of agriculture 
may be estimated at about 43,000 acres, and the greatest improvements and 
economies in the system of farming and watering cannot, with the present 
water supply, be expected to raise the irrigable area above 70,000 acres. 
