American Big Game in its Haunts 



ditch, smaller ditches are taken out, running nearly 

 parallel with each other, and from these laterals other 

 ditches, still smaller, and the seepage from all these 

 moistens a considerable area on which crops may be 

 grown. This, very roughly, is irrigation, a subject of 

 incalculable interest to the dwellers in the dry West. 



It is obvious that irrigation cannot be practiced 

 without water, and that every ditch which takes water 

 from a stream lessens the volume of that stream below 

 where the ditch is taken out. It is conceivable that 

 so many ditches might be taken out of the stream, and 

 so much of the water lost by evaporation and seepage 

 into the soil irrigated, that a stream which, uninter- 

 fered with, was bank full and even flowing throughout 

 the summer, might, under such changed condition, 

 become absolutely dry on the lower reaches of its 

 course. And this, in fact, is what has happened with 

 some streams in the West. Where this is the case, the 

 farmers who live on the lower stretches of the stream, 

 being without water to put on their land, can raise 

 no crops. Nothing, therefore, is more important to 

 the agriculturists of the West than to preserve full 

 and as nearly equal as possible at all seasons the 

 water supply in their streams. 



This water is supplied by the annual rain or snow 

 fall ; but in the West chiefly by snow. It falls deep 

 on the high mountains, and, protected there by the 

 pine forests, accumulates all through the winter, and 

 in spring slowly melts. The deep layer of half-rotted 

 pine needles, branches, decayed wood and other vege- 

 table matter which forms the forest floor, receives this 

 melting snow and holds much of it for a time, while 



456 



