jg^ CALIFORNIA FRUITS: HOW TO GROW THEM 



To use this instrument for locating the line of the ditch, calculate 

 the amount which your line should rise between each two pegs. 

 Drive a peg at the starting point with its top say six inches from 

 the general surface of the ground. Hold one end of the leveling 

 apparatus above this peg by exactly that amount which the line 

 arises per each instrument length (B C), and swing the other end 

 around into the direction from which the ditch is to come, until, 

 when level, it is just six inches above the ground. Drive a peg here, 

 which will, like the first, be six inches high, and proceed as before. 

 Care should be taken to give the top of each peg exactly the correct 

 elevation. The level must be horizontal when resting on any peg, 

 and raised exactly that amount which the line rises per level length, 

 above the preceding peg. It will be found convenient to use a care- 

 fully prepared block to hold on the top of each stake at the rear end 

 of the level instead of trusting to measurement each time. 



Locating Contour Lines for Checks or for Distributing Ditches. 

 This work can be done with the aid of the level above described. 

 For instance, to locate a contour (a line of equal elevation), as re- 

 quired in the construction of a check levee, drive a peg until its top 

 has a convenient elevation from the ground, say one foot. Rest one 

 end of the triangle on this peg and swing the other around until, 

 when B C is horizontal, this other end has exactly the same elevation 

 from the ground as the top of the peg. At this point drive a second 

 peg and proceed as before. If the tops of the pegs be chosen as the 

 height of the levee, they may be retained as grade stakes as well as 

 line stakes for the embankment. 



Storing Water from Small Sources. For individual uses quite 

 a respectable water supply can sometimes be developed from ap- 

 parently mean sources. This can be done by clearing out and 

 opening up hillside springs, and often by tunneling into the hillside 

 to intercept subterranean water-flows, or by pumping from a well. 

 Even a small spring, yielding but two quarts per second, would be 

 sufficient to irrigate several acres in fruit trees. To derive the 

 greatest benefit from small springs, however, a reservoir is neces- 

 sary, in which the flow of twelve to twenty-four hours, or even a 

 longer period, can be accumulated, and then discharged as required. 

 It is by using water in driblets that many springs are wasted. A 

 spring supplying even one and a half inches of water would be 

 wholly swallowed up by a thirsty soil within two hundred feet of its 

 source, when, by arresting the flow and accumulating it in a reser- 

 voir and discharging at intervals in a volume four times as large, it 

 would more than cover eight times the surface. A spring flowing 

 two quarts per second will discharge forty-three thousand two 

 hundred gallons in twenty-four hours. This would require a reser-' 

 yoir forty by twenty feet, and seven feet deep, or double that width 

 if the depth is decreased one-half. The shallower it can be made 

 the better, for many reasons, but especially on account of the tern- 



