322 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



hundred men would be required to effect the distribution, which, by the 

 engine, is effected by one man and a boy. 



If earthen pipes are used, the expense of irrigating may be reduced $5 

 per acre ; and I do not know why they should not, as we are aware the 

 Romans used earthenware for the distribution of water, at 100 feet of 

 pressure, and some laid down by them in the first century are still in use. 

 In France, at the present day, such pipes are in use at 120 feet of pressure. 

 At "Weymouth they have been in use for more than 20 years, at an inter- 

 mittent pressure of sixty feet j but neither engineers nor pipe manufactu- 

 rers appear generally to care to master so economical an apparatus, appa- 

 rently considering them impracticable. 



The power derivable from the prompt application of plain water to arra- 

 ble land, is unknown to the agriculture of the United States, and but little 

 known in garden culture, and scarcely practiced in horticulture. In the 

 market garden cultivation of Paris and Naples, effects are produced by 

 skillful watering, which we, as a people, know nothing about. At Naples 

 the water is distributed by regular channels of irrigation. At the market 

 gardens of Paris it is distributed by hand labor, by the use of the scoop^ 

 at a tremendous expense, but for which the extra produce amply compen- 

 sates. The cheap power of distributing water may often be of immense im- 

 portance to- the farmer, to facilitate the working of the land at those periods 

 when it is hardened by drought, and when, for plowing or other work, ex- 

 tra labor, often more than double the ordinary amount, is necessary. On 

 such occasions, laborers wet the ground to facilitate the working with the 

 spade. Where water is available, and when the ground maybe thoroughly 

 wetted at a small expense, the farmer may, by such an application, work in 

 two horses, where otherwise five might be required. A tank GO feet long, 

 12 feet wide, and 13 feet deep, furnished with lever agitators, holding 

 60,000 gallons, may be built for one thousand dollars. 



With solid manure the farmer frequently spreads the larvae of devastating 

 insects, and provides for their sustenation. By distributing manure in the 

 liquid form, this mischief is avoided. Moreover the fixed distributai-y ap- 

 paratus will be on a large s^ale, what the garden engine is on a small scale 

 to the horticulturist, a powerful arm to the agriculturists against insect 

 devastators, by the rapid distribution, in water, of cheap substances which 

 are destructive to them. By distributing a shower of muck-water over a 

 turnip field, the fly will immediately disappear. If you would illustrate 

 this question fairly, as to the expense, place a man at your liquid manure 

 cistern and let him pump through a hose, and you will find that the same 

 labor required to lift a given quantity of manure into a water cart, might 

 convey the same liquid as far as the hose need extend on the same level. 

 Mr. Neilson, of Halewood farm, England, having some time since had his 

 attention called to the facilities of this method of distribution by hand 

 pump and hose, as against the water cart, used a hose of four hundred feet 

 long, and found that he could, within the range of the hose, by hand labor, 

 distribute manure at less than one-third the expense of distribution by the 



