446 QUANTITY OF WATER APPLIED. 



tion during the season of vegetable growth, and in general it 

 much exceeds that quantity. In grass-grounds and in field-cul- 



Irrigation in Southern Europe, pp. 34, 87, 89 ; Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni, 

 etc. , p. 73 ; Mangon, Les Irrigations, p. 48. 



The practice of irrigation — except in mountainous countries where springs 

 and rivulets are numerous — is attended with very serious economical, social 

 and political evils. The construction of canals and their immensely ramified 

 branches, and the grading and scarping of the ground to be watered, are 

 always expensive operations, and they very often require an amount of capital 

 which can be commanded only by the state, by moneyed corporations, or by 

 very wealthy proprietors ; the capacity of the canals must be calculated with 

 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 can not 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 toward individual landholders. These circum- 

 stances discourage the division of the soil into small properties, and there is a 

 constant 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, Idea su 

 una Legge in materia di Acqua, 1864 ; and AYikiARD, Irrigations du Midi de 

 V Europe, where curious and important remarks on the laws and usages of the 

 Spanish 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. — Ibidem, 

 pp. 204, 205. For an account of recent irrigation works in Spain, see Spon, 

 Dictionary of Engineering, article Irrigation. On the legal aspects of irriga- 

 tion, see also the important work of Calandra, Manuale Idra,ulico-Legale, 

 8vo, Savigliano, 1871 ; Passt, Stride sur le Service Hydraulique, 8vo, Paris,. 

 1868, and of less recent works, especially Romagnosi, Trattato delta Condotta 



