Apr. 1. 1912 



216 



(0)OD[P ffilcDDOD 



A. I. Root. 



Jesus answered and said unto her. If thou knew- 

 est the gift of (iod, and who it Is that saith.to thee. 

 Give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, 

 and he would have given thee living water. The 

 woman saith unto him, Sir, thou hast nothing to 

 draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then 

 hft.st thou that living water? Art thou greater than 

 our father .lacob. which gave us the well, and drank 

 thereof himself, and his sons, and his cattle? Jesus 

 answered and said unto her, Every one thatdrink- 

 eth of this water sliall thirst again: but whosoever 

 drinkfth of the water that I shall give him shall 

 never thirst: but the water that 1 shall give him 

 shall become in him a well of water springing up 

 unto eternal life.— John 4 : 1014. 



Ever since childhood I have been more or 

 less interested in springs, and springs of 

 •' living water." Near my childhood home 

 there were many springs, and in my play I 

 had more or Jess to do with them. 1 built 

 dams, had little sawmills, and made tubes 

 of hollow reeds for hydraulic experiments. 

 Since then our readers will remember I have 

 written up springs more or less; in fact, I 

 have visited some of the finest and largest 

 springs in the world. Jtist of late I have 

 been interested in making artificial springs, 

 and this is what I want to tell you about 

 to-day. We have artesian wells in our 

 vicinity, it is true; but the artesian water is 

 not as good as water from a spring. We 

 also had quite a little expense, as we recent- 

 ly put up a windmill with a ten-barrel tank 

 elevated twenty feet. This windmill, of 

 course, gives us running water until the 

 tank is empty; but where we open a half- 

 inch pipe, a ten-barrel tank full lasts only 

 a few hours. In making our garden, I very 

 soon discovered that, when we have exces- 

 sive rains, such as we have had this past 

 winter, it is extremely important that our 

 ground be underdrained, and I finally pur- 

 chased a thousand tiles, shipped from 

 Georgia, for this purpose. Right at the 

 head of our garden, at the highest ground, 

 we commenced our line of tiles and went 

 down (to get good underdrainage) between 

 four and five feet. Then the tiles were 

 carried along with just as little fall as pos- 

 sible anil have a running stream. After 

 carrying them down three or four hundred 

 feet we found the ground so porous that the 

 water we had secured at the head was lost 

 in the porous soil. In order to obviate this 

 we ran the tile back to where there was a 

 pretty good stream running into a half- 

 barrel or keg. This half-barrel had a wire- 

 cloth partition across the middle in order to 

 prevent sediment from going into the iron 

 pil)es that are attached to the barrel. We 

 used old iron i)ipe, second-hand, that cost 

 but little, in place of the tiles; because when 

 the water once gets into the iron pipe it is 

 secure and can not soak into the loose 

 ground nor evai)orate. Well, in the fall we 

 were greatly pleased to find that this half- 

 inch iron pipe gave a full half-inch stream. 

 This stream was allowed to run into a tank 

 of water in the duck yard in the lower part 

 of the garden. 



I now want to digress a little to tell you 

 that down here in Florida we have an 

 abundance of rats. They are not the same 

 kind of rats that we have in the North, but 

 they are bad enough. Where we feed 

 chickens by scattering the grain on the 

 ground, the rats will come in and do a 

 thriving business. Well, I have explained 

 to you already that we head ofT the rats in 

 our poultry-houses by keeping all of our 

 grain and feed in galvanized iron tubs, and 

 these tubs are suspended from the ceiling by 

 three wires Now, we can not do this very 

 well in case of the ducks, because they can 

 not climb up and get the feed out of the 

 tubs; but I have got on to a plan which 

 seems to answer about as well. Our corn 

 and wheat, or what else is fed to the ducks, 

 is put into the bottom of these pans where 

 the running water flows in. The ducks, of 

 course, like it all the better for being under 

 water, and so far the rats have not discover- 

 ed any plan whereby they can get the grain 

 at the bottom of the pan. Now, with ducks 

 we want running water; because if the water 

 is not changed constantly, as any one who 

 has had experience with ducks will recog- 

 nize, it soon gets very muddy and foul; in 

 fact, a water-yjond for ducks that has not a 

 running stream to keep it supplied and to 

 keep the water moving will soon become 

 any thing but a pleasant sight or smell. 



Well, this stream of running water has 

 given me a great deal of pleasure every time 

 I have passed it. There it runs, day and 

 night, week days and Sundays. There is 

 no letup nor stoppage — at least there has 

 been none so far, and we are now in the 

 middle of quite a severe drouth, yet my 

 artificial spring continues to work just as it 

 did at first. The point I am getting at is 

 this: Almost any of you can have a spring 

 of runnir g water on your premises if you 

 have an acre of ground, or, better still, a few 

 acres. Rising ground, of course, is an ad- 

 vantage, because then you can get the 

 necessary fall without any great expense. 



Just a word in regard to a suitable place 

 for locating these artificial springs. Some 

 of our older readers may remember that 

 some years ago I made a visit to Father 

 Cole, as he was called —the man who i)ut 

 out the book entitled " Making the Water 

 Captive." Well, Father Cole told me that 

 he had discovered that most springs are at 

 the bottom of a ravine with a surface-water 

 drainage at the upper part. If you go out 

 in the woods or in the fields, and find a 

 place where the water has been running 

 when there are abundant rains you will 

 find, by digging down, that there is surface- 

 water running at almost any season of the 

 year. The best place in the world to do til- 

 ing for an artificial spring is in one of these 

 surface-drainage spots. You may object at 

 the expense of the tile; but if you are doing 

 any thing in the way of making garden or 



