28 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



ford to waste much of it in pumping 

 against friction. 



A full feed of water at the lower end 

 is almost as important as the height of 

 the lift. If you can throw a stream of 

 twenty-five to fifty inches for two or 

 three days at 'a time, so that there w T ill 

 be no more pumping to do for several 

 weeks, you can lift water cheaply with 

 steam in many places. Ten days run of 

 thirty-six and a half inches would be a 

 whole inch for a year, and if divided 

 into five periods of two days each or into 

 six periods of twenty inches running 

 three days at a time it should be enough 

 for ten acres in almost anything but al- 

 falfa, oranges, lemons or some kinds of 

 garden stuff in a dry country. But the 

 ordinary farm well surrenders to such a 

 draught in about three minutes. An 

 extra well in earth or.sand may stand it 

 for a few hours but after a few days 

 begins to dry and when it does it is gone. 

 It wants a pond or flowing stream or a 

 well on a good gravel bed, or some big 

 crevice in rock, connecting with some 

 big watershed. The well should gener- 

 ally be large, with drifts so as to give 

 sufficient percolating space, or you may 

 find it fail even with a good supply back 

 of it. In such cases don't try to save a 

 few dollars by being your own engineer. 

 The man who is his own lawyer finds 

 out very quickly where he is hurt but 

 the man who is his own engineer may 

 scratch a long while before he suspects 

 he has the seven years itch. The work 

 is so simple that no engineer would 

 charge as much as you lose in a week by 

 trying to dispense with him. 



In orchard work of all kinds in the 

 arid and semi-arid countries the rabbit is 

 a factor in irrigation. The festive "Jack" 

 will travel miles at night to nibble the 

 bark on young trees at certain times of 

 the year and there are times when no 

 amount of alfalfa will stay his passion. 

 The cotton tail is bad enough. A low 

 fence will keep either out as they do not 

 jump high, but it is much safer to pro- 

 tect the trunk of the trees when young 

 as they do not trouble it when old. 

 Tarred paper and wire netting made into 

 a roll and tied around the trunk are 

 used but the best, and cheapest, is the 

 Yucca Veneer made in Lo Angeles of 

 the " desert palm " by the Yucca Manu- 

 facturing Company. This is the most 



popular with the fruit growers on ac- 

 count of lightness and durability, ventil- 

 ating the tree and at the same time 

 keeping the sun from it, yet being as 

 light and convenient to ship and put on 

 as paper. 



On some kinds of soil you may be ap- 

 palled at seeing the water disappear 

 like magic at the first irrigation into 

 the many holes made by gophers and 

 other animals, and often a large tract 

 may cave in so that it seems a hopeless 

 task to irrigate it. But these troubles 

 will soon cease with regular and suffici- 

 ent irrigation. Even without any holes, 

 as on some parts of the desert where no 

 animals live, the soil seems at first so 

 awfully thirsty that you think it ridi- 

 culous to try to wet it enough. But 

 you will find this difficulty pass away 

 after you have the subsoil well filled 

 with moisture and you will like your 

 desert soil better than that of the wet 

 country. As a rule you will find it not 

 only quite as rich but so free from hard 

 pan or other impediment to good drain- 

 age that it is worth much more. I 

 would far rather have the soil of the 

 Salt River Valley in Arizona, on which 

 absolutely nothing of value can ever 

 exist without irrigation, than the richest 

 prairie of the west underlaid by clay or 

 other impervious material. 



But you must not infer from this that 

 soil with hardpan cannot be well irri- 

 gated. They cannot be drenched while 

 the well drained soil will stand drench- 

 ing better. From stupid work many a 

 man has concluded that his soil was not 

 susceptible of irrigation. In many a 

 section all attempts have been aban- 

 doned for this reason. There is no soil 

 that cannot be irrigated but some can 

 be handled more easily than others by 

 any one and will not suffer so much 

 from bad work. There are some that 

 cannot be irrigated except in a certain 

 way. If there is a clay or other subsoil 

 that interrupts the drainage it should 

 be well filled with moisture by winter 

 irrigation if it is porous, the moisture 

 retained by as good cultivation as is pos- 

 sible, all trees planted upon it and never 

 in it unless a hole is dug or blasted 

 through into some open material, It 

 should then be irrigated carefully and 

 never treated to too long a run of too 

 much water. In the case of tough clay 



