1868. | Artificial Irrigation. 485 
period at which the great canal maker of India, the Emperor 
Feroze, was employed in the construction of the work which still 
bears his name. 
Subsequent years saw a gradual development of the systems of 
irrigation, both in Lombardy and Piedmont, but they were for a 
long time administered in a very rude and imperfect way. No 
surveillance was exercised over the distribution of the waters, and 
every man supplied his own wants very much according to his own 
wishes. In the year 1474 the first indications appear of a regulated 
outlet being applied to the canal of Ivrea, in Piedmont, which, 
though of a rude plan at first, became modified and improved 
step by step, until the metrical module of the present day was 
arrived at. 
Soon after the North-western Provinces of India came under 
the British Government, the propriety of restormg the Mogul 
canals began to be agitated. Attention, it is said, was first drawn 
to the subject by the offer of a Mr. Mercer to re-open the Delhi 
canal at his own expense, on being secured the whole proceeds of 
it for twenty years. This offer was declined, and about*the year 
1810 several officers were deputed to survey and report upon the 
lines both east and west of the Jumna. ‘The subject was, however, 
soon dropped, but it was resumed with characteristic vigour during 
the administration of the Marquis of Hastings, who, in 1817, 
appointed an officer to superintend the restoration of the Delhi 
canal; and in 1822 another officer was deputed to survey and 
report upon the Doab canal. Similarly, in Southern India, the 
works of the natives were followed up and improved upon soon 
after the acquisition of the country. ‘The hopeless state of con- 
fusion into which the Tanjore Government had fallen having led 
to the cession of the country to the English in 1801, the main- 
tenance of the works of irrigation in that province, of course, 
devolved upon them from that time forward; and it was not long 
before certain defects inherent in the system began to exhibit them- 
selves in a very clear and unpleasant manner. 
The earlier works of this character, undertaken by the British 
in India, were, almost without exception, the restoration of ancient 
native works, and the defects originally existing in their construc- 
tion were too often followed and imitated. On the Ganges canal, 
for the first time, was any entirely original work of this class 
attempted. Ground was broken on the 16th April, 1842, and 
the canal was opened, by the admission of water, on the 8th 
April, 1854. 
It would carry us beyond the limits of a single paper were we 
to attempt to trace down the continued progress of irrigation works 
from the period of their revival in the different countries to which 
reference has been made in the foregoing pages; we shall, therefore, 
