QUANTITY OF WATER APPLIED. 461 
eral it much exceeds that quantity. In grass-grounds and in 
field-culture it ranges from 27 or 28 to 60 inches, while in 
smaller crops, tilled by hand-labor, it is sometimes carried as 
high as 800 inches.* The rice-grounds and the marcite of 
reference to the area intended to be irrigated, and when they and their 
branches are once constructed, it is very difficult to extend them, or to ac- 
commodate any of their original arrangements to changes in the condition of 
the soil, or in the modes or objects of cultivation ; the flow of the water being 
limited by the abundance of the source or the capacity of the canals, the indi- 
vidual proprietor cannot be allowed to withdraw water at will, according to 
his own private interest or convenience, but both the time and the quantity of 
supply must be regulated by a general system applicable, as far as may be, 
to the whole area irrigated by the same canal, and every cultivator must con- 
form his industry to a plan which may be quite at variance with his special 
objects or with his views of good husbandry. The clashing interests and the 
jealousies of proprietors depending on the same means of supply are a source 
of incessant contention and litigation, and the caprices or partialities of the 
officers who control, or of contractors who farm, the canals, lead not unfre- 
quently to ruinous injustice towards individual landholders. These cireum- 
stances discourage the division of the soil into small properties, and there is a 
eonstant tendency to the accumulation of large estates of irrigated land in 
the hands of great capitalists, and consequently to the dispossession of the 
small cultivators, who pass from the condition of owners of the land to that 
of hireling tillers. The farmers are no longer yeomen, but peasants. Having 
no interest in the soil which composes their country, they are virtually expa- 
triated, and the middle class, which ought to constitute the real physical and 
moral strength of the land, ceases to exist as a rural estate, and is found only 
among the professional, the mercantile, and the industrial population of the 
cities.—See, on the difficulty of regulating irrigation by law, NEGRI, Jdea su una 
Legge in materia di Acqua, 1864; and AGMARD, Irrigations du Midi de 0 Hu- 
rope, where curious and important remarks on the laws and usages of the Span- 
ish Moors and the Spaniards, in respect to irrigation, will be found. The Moors 
were so careful in maintaining the details of their system, that they kept in 
public offices bronze models of their dams and sluices, as guides for repairs 
and rebuilding. Some of these models are still preserved.—Tbidem, pp. 204, 
205. For an account of recent irrigation works in Spain, see Spon, Dictionary 
of Engineering, article Irrigation. 
* Nimx, Agriculture des Etats Sardes, p. 237. Lombardini’s computation 
just given allows eighty-one cubic métres per day to the hectare [two hun- 
dred and sixty cubic yards to the acre], which, supposing the season of irriga- 
tion to be one hundred days, is equal to a precipitation of thirty-two inches. 
But in Lombardy, water is applied to some crops during a longer period than 
one hundred days ; and in the marcite it flows over the ground even in winter. 
According to Boussingault (eonomie Rurale, ii., p. 246), grass-grounds ought 
