DRAINAGE IN CALIFORNIA \^\ 



higher levels. This land is sub-irrigated, it is true, but there is no 

 system about it, except the natural distribution of water, which is 

 to seek its level. Some of our most productive lands are of this 

 character, and where the soil and subsoil are fitted to the movement 

 of this living water, and not apt to retain it up to the point of sat- 

 uration, satisfactory growth of deep-rooting field crops and of trees 

 and vines are secured. But this is not sub-irrigation in the ordinary 

 signification of the term. 



Several systems of sub-irrigation by subterranean pipes have 

 been devised by California inventors, but none have passed beyond 

 the experimental stage, and no acreage has been continually op- 

 erated. This, of course, has no reference to carrying water in sub- 

 terranean pipes to outlets for surface distribution. Such distribution 

 systems are largely used. 



DRAINAGE IN CALIFORNIA 



There was for a long time a very erroneous popular generaliza- 

 tion that California soils do not need drainage; that in a dry state 

 the aim should be to retain the moisture, not to part with it. It is, 

 of course, true that we have vast areas of naturally well-drained 

 soil, upon which any money spent for drainage would be in a great 

 part thrown away, but we have, also, both in the valley and on the 

 hillsides, localities where, by peculiar character and conformation 

 of the subsoil, water is held in the soil until evaporated from the 

 surface, and the result is a boggy, miry condition, which prevents 

 proper winter cultivation, and at the same time injures the roots of 

 the trees or vines. This defective cultivation, added to the puddling 

 effect of standing water, makes the soil dry out completely under 

 the fervid sun of summer, and the result is that the wettest soil of 

 the winter may be the driest in the summer, and plants which are in- 

 jured by soaking in winter suffer again from lack of moisture and 

 sustenance in summer. Thus it is a fact, clearly proven by observa- 

 tion and experience, that thorough under-drainage removes surplus 

 water in winter, and ministers to the retention of moisture in sum- 

 mer. More than this, a soil puddled by standing water can not 

 present its contents in available form for plant nutrition, and be- 

 sides, it loses the fertilizing effects of atmospheric currents, which 

 pass through an open, well-dried soil. Wet land is cold and late in 

 spring, and hot as a baked brick under the summer sun; it is no 

 fiction of the imagination to say that well drained land is warm in 

 winter and cool in summer that is, cool to a degree which favors 

 quick and free root growth, and cool enough to escape the parching 

 effect of deeply baked soil. 



These, and a host of similar considerations, which have made 

 under-drainage popular in older countries, are of weight in Cali- 

 fornia. Possibly, as a rule, because of our vast area of deep, kind 

 loams, the proportion of land needing drainage in this State is less 

 than elsewhere, and yet there is a vast extent of country to be im- 

 proved by tiling. There have been large losses of trees from plant- 

 ing upon soils defective in this respect. The evil has resulted from 



