xin. 



THE POSSIBILITIES OF IRRIGATION. 



I HAVE given an account of my poor, little experi- 

 ment in Irrigation, because it is one which almost 

 every farmer can imitate and improve upon, however 

 narrow his domain and slender his fortune. I pre- 

 sume there are Half a Million homesteads in the 

 United States which have natural facilities for Irri- 

 gation at least equal to mine ; many of them far 

 greater. Along either slope of the AUeghenies, 

 throughout a district at least a thousand miles long 

 by three hundred wide, nearly every farm might be 

 at least partially irrigated by means of a dam costing 

 from twenty-five to one hundred dollars ; so might 

 at least half the farms in New-England and our own 

 State. On the prairies, the plans must be different, 

 and the expense probably greater, but the results ob- 

 tained would bounteously reward the outlay. I shall 

 not see the day, but there are those now living who 

 will see it, when Artesian wells will be dug at points 

 wliere many acres may be flowed from a gentle swell 

 in the midst of a vast plain, or at the head of a fertile 

 valley, expressly, or at least mainly, that its waters 



(79) 



