118 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



fine soil coated the bottom and sides of the 

 furrow with a fine slime?" 



"Y yes," he answered. He need not 

 have taken the trouble, for the dried slime 

 spoke for itself. 



"And when it dried, instead of cultivat- 

 ing and breaking it up you left it to 

 crack. '' 



He did not answer this. The furrow 

 answered for him. 



" And when it dried and cracked until it 

 got dry enough you fired mommuddy water 

 down it and puddled the cracks. And you 

 let it dry and form new cracks and then 

 puddled them again. And you repeated 

 this process several times a year for two or 

 three years until it now comes near being 

 a cement ditch. Consequently a tree may 

 stand within three feet of it and get moist- 

 ure enough to carry half a crop fairly well 

 but not get enough evenly distributed 

 through the soil to feed up to the point 

 necessary to carry a big load up to first 

 grade." 



"That's what's the matter," remarked 

 the editor. 



The owner did not say much, but the 

 chances are he is still running that field in 

 the same way without a particle of cultiva- 

 tion, keeping the same old furrows and 

 puddling the new cracks in them as fast as 

 they form. The number of people who can 

 comprehend the folly of working out anew 

 for themselves things that for years have 

 been worked out for them somewhere else 

 is very small. 



By a long run of a small stream instead 

 of a short run of a big one, and with good 

 cultivation of the whole, breaking up the 

 furrows each time, these trees would have 

 done as well as any trees in California. 

 The soil was fine enough to permit it, and 

 it would have taken far less water to pro- 

 duce twice the crop and make it nearly all 

 first grade. 



EXPERIMENTS IN CALIFORNIA. 



On a place where I once spent three 

 years, and took considerable interest in the 

 irrigation because I was depending on it 

 for fruit, the watering was all of this kind. 

 It was in 1879, and little was then known 

 about irrigation in California, the methods 

 being of the crudest types. But it would 

 not have paid to use anything better in 

 this case, for there was no market for the 

 fruit and it was raised only for home use. 



A little dam across the creek furnished a 

 head of about twelve inches for six hours 

 every three days and there was nothing to 

 do but go up and pull out the shingle that 

 formed the gate. I soon found that the 

 trees had grown balls of thread roots close 

 up to the ditches and that the water soaked 

 but a short distance to the sides. The 

 fruit was very good provided there was not 

 much of it. When there was it was small, 

 sour and flat. This was in a region where the 

 rainfall was about twenty inches, and trees 

 would live and bear something without any 

 irrigation. But it was then plain to me 

 from some experiments I made that, while 

 the trees got drink enough through the 

 skeins of thread roots they had formed 

 along the ditches, there was not enough 

 ground sufficiently wet to enable them to 

 feed the tree properly when well loaded. 



Many such little ditches are still found 

 in out- of the- way places, and they bear 

 well enough for home use but not enough 

 for heavy profit. And the results look 

 very fine to one who has never known 

 what it is to market a crop of fruit. 

 When one learns that nearly all the profit 

 is in the first grade, and that the second 

 hardly pays expenses, while the third had 

 better go to the hogs than ruin the reputa- 

 tion of the grower and his locality by go- 

 ing on the market, one begins to find out 

 where he is. And if the place has a 

 mortgage on it he may be behind on the 

 interest, while some one, with conditions 

 not as good, is making large profit out of 

 every acre. 



In 1878 I experimented with these 

 small streams on adobe soil of the blackest 

 and stickiest kind. I wanted vegetables 

 and could get them only by raising them 

 myself. I was limited to a windmill from 

 a very deep well, making the stream small 

 and slow. But I was surprised to find 

 that a very small stream soaked sideways 

 with great rapidity, and that nothing was 

 gained by increasing it so long as it flowed 

 at all. All it wanted was time and this it 

 had to have no matter how long. 



On some soils, however, this will be an 

 absolute failure. In 1877 I tried the 

 same thing on some alluvial soil of very 

 fine appearance and very rich. But the 

 water fell through it as fast as it was 

 turned in, and if the stream was increased 

 enough to force its way along then it pud- 

 dled the sides and bottom and still re- 



