IRRIGATION. 117 



IRRIGATION. 



WATER is not only one of the sources of supply of plant food, since all the materials 

 that promote vegetable life must be. in a soluble form before being available, but it 

 also furnishes the elements essential to plant life and growth. Most countries, as a 

 general rule, receive this necessary element in sufficient quantities to favor vegetable growth in 

 the supply of rain and dew; but in many sections of different climates irrigation, or the arti 

 ficial application of water to growing crops, is one of the essentials in successful agriculture. 

 In this country, crops often suffer more from drought than from all other causes combined, and 

 this evil seems to be extending, especially in the west and southwestern portions, where, as the 

 forests disappear through the agency of the axe and fire, the rains are less frequent. The yearly 

 amount of rainfall may not be, and probably is not, much diminished, since this change, but 

 the intervals between the showers are more prolonged, and to the extent that the earth 

 frequently becomes parched and the crops suffer accordingly. Besides, the rains coming 

 between such long intervals generally descend in torrents, and although a portion of the water 

 will be absorbed by the soil, a large portion flows into streams and is lost as far as agricultural 

 uses are concerned. Forests have long been regarded as the regulators of rainfall, and if they 

 could be in a measure restored by tree-planting, in a few years the evil would be largely 

 remedied, and the rain-storms more frequent and less violent. Irrigation is found to be one 

 of the most primitive of agricultural arts, the remains of reservoirs and canals for this purpose 

 still existing in those regions where civilization had its origin, as among the most ancient 

 human relics. Egypt and the Barbary States, Syria, and other parts of Asia, Italy, Spain, 

 and other portions of Europe practiced irrigation extensively hundreds of years ago, and to 

 this means may be traced the high rank in agriculture that was early attained in these 

 regions. Lombardy and Piedmont average from thirty-seven to thirty-eight inches of rainfall 

 during the year, most of it falling between March and October, the irrigating months, and 

 yet it is estimated that 1,000,000 acres in Lombardy are irrigated by works costing 

 $200,000,000, which fact explains in a measure why that section should be one of the most 

 productive of all Italy, and the very garden of that region. In Italy the canals for irrigating 

 purposes are owned principally by the government; in France there are no government canals, 

 they being generally built by the land-owners, yet are periodically inspected by government 

 engineers. In our own hemisphere there are many portions of Spanish America where irri 

 gation has always been necessary to successful agriculture; beside, there are vast tracts, both 

 on the east and west of the Rocky Mountains, which are usually considered an arid desert, 

 and estimated to be equal to nearly one-fifth of the productive area of the United States, 

 portions of which have been irrigated and found to be productive in an astonishing degree, 

 especially for the common cereals, and we believe the time is not far distant when that entire 

 section will, by artificial watering whether it be by artesian wells or otherwise be made 

 productive, and its value to the country proportionately increased. Utah furnishes a most 

 remarkable illustration of the wonderful effects of irrigation, which, since the year 1847, has 

 transformed the Salt Lake Valley, then a barren wilderness, into one of the most productive 

 regions in the world, and this has all been accomplished by means of irrigation alone. 

 Whatever objections we may have toward the Mormons in their religion and practices, we 

 must give them the credit of having one of the most perfect systems of agriculture by irri 

 gation known. There are there at present from four hundred to five hundred irrigating canals, 

 many of them of considerable size and Length, and these have not only completely changed 

 this formerly barren desert into a land of luxuriant vegetation and beauty, but have been th 

 means of producing other important and beneficial results, such as cooling the temperature of 

 the atmosphere, and lessening the evaporation of the water of the lake, etc. Prof. Paul A. 

 Chadbourne gives the following respecting this change: 



