18 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



so without letting in the air, the farther you come 

 from the best results. Mulches of various other kinds 

 that retain moisture perfectly have been tried but they 

 fall far short of the effects of stirring the soil. 



The second evil, of too much water, that I shall no- 

 tice here is reducing too much the temperature of the 

 ground. Every product has its own special tempera- 

 ture, at which it will do best. Peas and turnips will 

 do best in a soil too cool for good corn or melons. 

 But most everything needs the soil somewhat warmer 

 than the average temperature of rain and warmer 

 than the water of many ditches generally is. Water 

 from either source generally lowers the temperature 

 at first, and it is not until the sun has raised it again 

 that things begin to grow well. 



If. therefore, too much water is used, it tends to 

 prevent aeration of the ground and thus keeps it 

 " sour," and it may hold down the temperature too 

 much and check the work of the warm sun. There 

 are other bad effects, to be noticed hereafter, but 

 these two are enough to satisfy you that good irriga- 

 tion means neither too much nor too little water, but 

 just the right quantity, applied at just the right time. 

 When one has done this you will never hear him talk- 

 ing about irrigated fruit being deficient in flavor. 

 Such talk is now a badge of ignorance. Too much 

 water is bad, and it matters not whether it comes from 

 the clouds, direct, or through the medium of a ditch, 

 but the right quantity at the right times will give the 

 best results with anything that is grown in the soil. 



Into one or the other of these errors you are quite 

 sure to fall if you have a chance. If you have a small 

 supply of water you are quite certain to flatter your- 

 self that things are doing finely when in fact they are 

 merely marking time instead of marching. Especially 

 is this the case where you buy it by the thousand 

 gallons, another grand discovery made by the sages 

 of San Diego to hold back a country. It is like buy- 

 ing hay for your horse at so much a straw; as surely 

 as you do it so surely shall you flatter yourself every 

 day that that horse is keeping remarkably fat and 

 can just as well get along with another straw or two 

 less. 



Reverse, now, the conditions and give you all the 

 water you can run and, marvellous the change. You can 

 now beat any Indian in wasting water. You will go far 

 to the other extreme. The more loudly you boasted 

 before of how little water things needed the more 

 you will now pour on when it is not needed. You 

 will be especially delighted to find how simple it is 

 when the ground begins to bake from one overdose 

 to pour on another instead of perspiring behind an 

 odious cultivator. The fact that this discovery is as 

 old as the hills and has held back for years every 

 country where it has been done you will probably be 

 as slow in learning as were the people of San Diego 

 in learning that any one else had ever been fooled by 

 the work of young trees into believing that their land 

 needed no water. 



(To be continued.) 



IRRIGATION BY THE USE OF WINDMILLS. 



BY B. A. MCALLESTER, LAND COMMISSIONER OP THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY. 



AT the Interstate Irrigation convention held at 

 Salina, Kan., on September 28, 1893, my at- 

 tention was particularly drawn to the subject of 

 pumping water for irrigation by means of windmill 

 pumps. Several gentlemen were present from Garden 

 City, Kan., who detailed, in a very interesting way 

 the results obtained in their locality by this means. 

 Shortly afterward, in conversation with a gentleman 

 from Julesburg, Colo., I learned that one or two farms 

 were being irrigated in the same manner in the vi- 

 cinity of Julesburg. 



A RAILROAD GATHERS PACTS. 



It then became a matter of curiosity to ascertain the 

 extent to which this irrigation, by pumping, has been 

 practiced throughout the country, and I prepared and 

 sent to each of our station agents and land agents in 

 Nebraska, west of North Platte; Kansas, west of Wa- 

 Keeney; Wyoming, east and south of Cheyenne, and 

 all of our agents in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, 

 a circular letter asking the names and addresses of 

 any individuals whom they might know were 



pumping water for irrigation purposes. In response 

 to these letters I secured in the neighborhood of two 

 hundred names of parties located in western Nebraska, 

 southeastern Wyoming, northeastern and east-central 

 Colorado, and western Kansas. To each one of those 

 parties I sent a letter asking the locality of their lands, 

 number of acres irrigated, power used, whether wind 

 or steam, cost of plant and cost per year of operation; 

 depth and diameter of well, depth of water, whether 

 or not the well could be pumped dry; diameter of 

 stream coming from the pump, capacity of pump in 

 gallons per hour, average length of time per year of 

 running the pump, and area and depth of reservoir. 

 A large number of these letters have been returned 

 with full and complete answers to the questions asked 

 and in many instances accompanied by enthusiastic 

 letters advocating this method of irrigation. 



QUIZZING THE WIND-MILL MAKERS. 



While awaiting replies to these letters to the indi- 

 vidual farmers, I submitted to one of the prominent 

 wind-engine pump companies a series of questions as 



