24 WHAT THE SISTER ARTS 



with a more gentle and measured cadence to the great River, 

 and are drawn off and stayed from point to point to fill the irri- 

 gating canals and insure a rich reward to the husbandman's labors. 

 Let any stream from heavy rains become a raging, foaming, 

 milky torrent, and its waters have a value which the pure element 

 could not command, and are drawn off on every side until the 

 canals and reservoirs are filled and all danger of inundation pre- 

 cluded. Thus the waters are most valuable for irrigation just 

 when they are most easily and abundantly obtainable for that 

 purpose. The water which has irrigated one fertile garden or 

 field, far from being exhausted, has been rendered more nourish- 

 ing thereby, and may now be drawn off to fertilize the next field, 

 lying an inch or so lower, and thence to the next, and so on to the 

 river, enriching and gladdening all it touches on its way. Irrigation 

 is the life-blood of Lombardy ; shall it be nothing, teach nothing, 

 to us? 



If there be a country on earth which one would suppose irriga- 

 tion unsuited to, Great Britain is that country. Her exceedingly 

 moist, cool climate, coupled with her compact, clay subsoil (not 

 universal, but very extensive) would seem to render a deficiency 

 of moisture one of the very last evils to be apprehended or guarded 

 against in her Agriculture. And yet her best farmers are now 

 embarking rapidly and extensively in Irrigation, finding it prac- 

 ticable and immensely profitable. Not here, as in Lombardy, is 

 the natural flow of the streams, in their descent from the hills to 

 the rivers, relied on ; but great pumps are employed, raising 

 water by steam or other power from rivers, brooks and ponds, 

 to a hight whence it is carried by gravitation through metallic 

 and gutta-percha pipes to every point where it is needed. Mr. 

 Mechi, the ex-London merchant, who retired from trade with a 

 competency to earn another by scientific farming, takes the lead 

 in this application, and his estimates of the increased productive- 

 ness of lands by reason of irrigation and the profits thus secured 

 would seem wild to any audience unfamiliar with the subject. I 

 may state, however, that he fixes the expense of conveying his 

 manures in liquid form from his yard to every portion of his es- 

 tate as equivalent to one penny sterling or two cents per cartload 



