THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



207 



much less than 24 inches of rainfall will insure a good 

 crop, is greatly enhanced by the wide area covered 

 and the total amount produced. The wheat acreage 

 of California in 1893 was 2,620,490 acres, and the total 

 product 34,852,517 bushels. 



This necessarily implies a variety of conditions, 

 since it is well known that the rainfall is exceedingly 

 variable in California, owing to its wide diversity of 

 surface and to the relations of various sections to the 

 sea and the mountain chains. 



TESTIMONY OF THE ALFALFA FIELDS. 



Much alfalfa is grown in California, Arizona, Colo- 

 rado and other sections of the arid region. In Cali- 

 fornia it is not uncommon to cut five crops of alfalfa 

 from the same ground yearly, each crop averaging 

 two tons per acre. The crop is very often cut seven 

 times per year, and the writer has frequently seen 

 eight crops taken .from the same field in one year. 

 In California alfalfa may be and is grown with the 

 most gratifying success under a rainfall of less than 

 ten inches, and on land irrigated with a miner's inch 

 of water to each four or five acres. According to 

 Major Powell's theory, these crops of alfalfa hay 

 would require at least 80 inches of water on each 

 acre, in addition to ten inches of rainfall. It is per- 

 haps enough to say on this head that no alfalfa 

 grower in California uses anything like so much 

 water as this, and it is well known that thousands of 

 acres of this crop are annually produced with much 

 less than one-half, probably less than one-third of 

 the water demanded by Major Powell's painfully 

 elaborated theory. 



WHAT THE CORNFIELDS SHOW. 



For the season of 1893 the 72,000,000 acres of corn 

 in the United States yielded a trifle over 22 bushels 

 per acre. The 71,775 acres in California yielded 32 

 bushels per acre, and, like the wheat produced, was 

 not irrigated. Not only is it not customary to irri- 

 gate cornfields in California, but the writer has seen 

 . fields of corn grown in that State which yielded 75 

 bushels of ears to the acre, and on which not a drop 

 of rain fell from the time the corn was planted until 

 it was husked. Neither did it receive a drop of irri- 

 gating water, and it was produced in a region where 

 the rainfall through a period of 19 years has aver- 

 aged only 18.31 inches annually. 



THE PRUNE ORCHARDS TESTIFY. 



Not only are millions of bushels of wheat, millions 

 of bushels of corn, millions of bushels of barley and 

 tens of thousands of tons of hay annually produced 

 in California without irrigation and under a rainfall 



not exceeding 9 to 16 inches, but more than 100,000 

 tons of fruit are produced under similar conditions 

 every year. Not to prolong this article to unneces- 

 sary dimensions, only the prune industry of a single 

 county will be cited. A few of the prune orchards in 

 Santa Clara county, California, are irrigated, prob- 

 ably a twentieth part of the area devoted to that 

 crop. Broadly speaking, however, the crop is grown 

 without irrigation, and there is a difference of opin- 

 ion as to whether it pays to irrigate at all. . And yet 

 this county produces yearly one-third as many 

 prunes as are consumed in the United States. In 

 1893 the crop reached an aggregate of about 35,000,- 

 000 pounds of cured fruit, requiring at least 100,000,- 

 000 pounds as it was taken from the trees. But this 

 is only one feature of the fruit industry of California 

 which flourishes over wide areas, and under condi- 

 tions which Major Powell declares impossible. The 

 stern logic of facts and actual experience is far 

 more convincing to the average man than mere the- 

 ories unsupported by mathematical deductions from 

 a sufficient number of observed facts. The annual 

 rainfall at San Jose, California, the center of the 

 prune industry, during a period of 18 years has aver- 

 aged only 14.52 inches. 



All the figures given in this article are from official 

 sources, and prove beyond peradventure that Major 

 Powell's position regarding the amount of rainfall 

 necessary to produce a crop is wholly untenable. If 

 he should take the ground that proximity to the sea 

 might account for a part of the success in California, it 

 may be answered that nearly the entire area here 

 considered is not near the sea, but in regions where 

 atmosphere has no parallel for dryness in any State 

 or locality east of the Rocky mountains. During a 

 considerable part of the year the air is so dry over a 

 vast area of the country under review that dew does 

 not form, though the nights are cool, and water evap- 

 orates with wonderful rapidity. He has no ground 

 to stand upon here. It is not a moisture-laden 

 atmosphere that helps out, for there is little available 

 moisture in the air; it simply means that the Major 

 is mistaken, and that crops do not require anywhere 

 near the rainfall which he alleges for their proper 

 growth and maturity. If the deductions of Major 

 Powell are the net result of a quarter century of work 

 in the geological survey, a proper inquiry may well 

 be: What is it worth to the American people? 



[EDITORIAL NOTE: The article in reply to Major Powell on 

 " Water Duty in Arizona," by W. A. Hancock, referred to else- 

 where is unavoidably omitted, but will appear in June.] 



