SALTS DEPOSITED BY WATER OF IRRIGATION. 45^ 



Hsli miles, and to be destructive to crops and even to trees within 

 its reach. Land thus affected can no longer be employed for any 

 purpose but growing rice, and when prepared for that crop, it 

 propagates still fm-ther the evils under which it had itself suffered, 

 and of course the mischief is a growing one." * 



Salts deposited hy Water of Irrigation. 



The attentive traveller in Egypt and JS'ubia can not fail to 

 notice many localities, generally of small extent, where the soil 

 is rendered infertile by an excess of saline matter in its composi- 

 tion. In many cases, perhaps in all, these barren spots He rather 

 above the level usually flooded by the inundations of the Nile, 

 and yet they exhibit traces of former cultivation. Observations 

 in India suggest a possible explanation of this fact. A sahne 

 efflorescence called " Eeh " and " Kuller " is gradually invading 



* EscouRKOU-MiLiiiAGO, L'ltolie d, propos de V Exposition de Paris, 1856, 

 p. 93. According to an article in the Gazzetta d' Torino for the 17th of Jan- 

 uary, 1869, the deaths from malarious fever in the Canavese district — which 

 is asserted to have been altogether free from this disease before the recent 

 introduction of rice-culture — between the 1st of January and the 15th of Octo- 

 ber, 1868, were two thousand two hundred and tifty. The extent of the inju- 

 rious influence of this very lucrative branch of rural industry in Italy is con- 

 tested by the rice-growers. But see Secondo Laura, Le Eisaje, Torino, 

 1869 ; Selmi, II Miasma Palustre, p. 89 ; and especially Carlo Lrvi, Bella 

 coltivazione del Riso in Italia, in the Nuora Antologia for July, 1871, p. 599, 

 et seq. 



According to official statistics, the rice-grounds of Italy, including the isl- 

 ands, amounted in 1866 to 450,000 acres. It is an interesting fact in relation 

 to geographical and climatic conditions, that while little rice is cultivated 

 south of N. L. 44^ in Italy, little is grown in the United States north of 35°. To 

 the southward of the great alluvial plain of the Po, the surface is in general 

 too much broken to admit of the formation of level tields of much extent, and 

 where the ground is suitable the supply of water is often insufBcient. 



The Moors introduced the cultivation of rice into Spain at an early period 

 of their dominion in that country. It appears to have been cultivated in Italy 

 as early as the 13th century. Agostino Gallo, the author of the curious vol- 

 ume, Le Venti Giornate deW Agricoltura, who died in 1570, is said to have 

 first introduced rice into Lombardy. The Spaniards extended its cultivation 

 in Lombardy and introduced it into the Neapolitan territory in the 16th cen- 

 tury ; but besides the want of water and of level ground convenient for irri- 

 gation, rice-husbandry has proved so much more pestilential in Southern 

 than in Northern Italy that it has long been discouraged by the Neapolitair 

 government. 



