THE ART OF IRRIGATION. 



SIXTH PAPER: WATER MEASUREMENT AND DELIVERY CONSIDERED. 



BY T. S. VAN DYKE. 



AT first glance a description of the methods 

 of the most successful irrigating settlements 

 of our country would seem the best way of 

 teaching the use of water. It would be if it did not 

 crowd out more important matter. In these days of 

 haste the patience of the reader and not the " second 

 wind " of the author is the limit of a book. More- 

 over, a method good in one place may be wholly un- 

 fit for another. It may be bad even there, yet good 

 because the best available. Or, it may be good in 

 general, yet bad in some details; as in the illustrations 

 we often see of laterals and sub-laterals, with con- 

 nections of earth instead of wood, or something by 

 which an even feed of water from one to the other 

 may be insured, so that one stream is not too big and 

 another too small, or stopped entirely by the streams 

 beside it taking too much water, or a leaf, or other 

 small thing, making a dam at the passageway from 

 one to the other ; and again, this may be good because 

 the nature of the crop will justify nothing better. A 

 hundred miles from there, or on a different scale, or 

 under a different soil it might pay so well to use the 

 better method that it would be folly to imitate the other 

 plan though it be profitable there. You must learn 

 the principle upon which all good work depends* 

 Then, and only then, can you decide what you want. 



CONDITIONS TO BE CONSIDERED. 



The best methods will be described as we go on; 

 your choice will depend not upon your preferences 

 or your inclination to imitate successful irrigators 

 at home or abroad, but upon: 



1st. The character of your soil. 



2d. Its slope and drainage facilities. 



3d. The amount of rainfall it has. 



4th. The amount of water at your disposal for the 

 year or season. 



5th. The amounts or heads in which this quantity 

 of water maybe used by you at different times and 

 the frequency of the times. 



Differences in the amount of hot weather, markets 

 and other smaller considerations may also affect this 

 question. But the five limitations above given are 

 absolute, especially the fourth and fifth. 



THE DELIVERY OF THE WATER. 



And these lead to an examination of the way 

 water is delivered by companies, whether public or 

 private a subject you must master whether you like 



it or not, for the knowledge of it is essential to full 

 success, even if you own your own water works. 



As a rule, water from a company is a more reliable 

 and convenient source of supply than any private 

 works you can build. Some of these are companies 

 of which the stock has been sold out along with the 

 land so that the irrigators are in the same situation 

 as if they had clubbed together in the first place and 

 built the works themselves. Other companies sell 

 water while keeping the stock, and these are gener- 

 ally as reliable and good as the others. But the 

 method of distribution is the same in both; it is 

 founded in good sense and will always exist. 



BUY A WATER RIGHT. 



Water is sold for irrigation by the cubic foot a sec- 

 ond or by the miner's inch. In a few cases I have 

 known it sold by the thousand gallons, and one who 

 knows little of the subject is liable to think this a 

 good way. It is, however, too much like buying hay for 

 your horse at so much a straw. So surely as you do 

 it, so surely shall you flatter yourself that that horse 

 is keeping remarkably fat on one or two straws a day- 

 less. He will be like the Irishman's horse that he 

 trained to live without eating. Just as he "got 

 him elegantly broke he died." Buy a full water 

 supply and then you will be sure always to use 

 enough. And unless you are in a land owner's com- 

 pany where the stock represents your right to the 

 water, buy what is called a "water right," and don't 

 listen to anyone who tells you that a public water 

 company, like a common carrier, is bound to deliver 

 water to all applicants on tender of the rates. What 

 your trees or other things want is water. They won't 

 thrive worth a cent on damages at the end of a long 

 law suit, especially when the question is one that may 

 be fought over again the next season. A " water 

 right'' contract, as it is called, is not, as some tell you, 

 an additional means of squeezing you to enrich east- 

 ern goldbugs. It is an insurance policy. You are 

 put on the list of the company's consumers and so 

 much water is set apart for you. No decent com- 

 pany will oversell its supply in such a case, but will 

 save enough water for you in all except extraordinary 

 seasons when you may have to take less, the 

 same as if you were in a landowner's company 

 in which the allowance of water to the stock- 

 holders is based upon the average seasons and not 

 upon the exceptional. But if there is no contract 



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