HE IRRIGATION AGE. 



61 



facie showing of the wells, had to come to 

 the conclusion that the plaintiffs had failed 

 to prove their case. 



The land was common fanning land with 

 no sign of water on surface. To sustain 

 their case plaintiffs had to base it on ripa- 

 rian ownership of an underground stream. 

 For if it were a stationary sheet then it 

 would be percolating water and belong to 

 the owner of the land, the company. 



We at once claimed that if in motion at 

 all it must have a supply and a discharge, 

 no matter what its shape or rate of motion. 

 For if it had no discharge it would rise to 

 the surface somewhere at the lower end, it 

 being all open gravely soil with no sheets 

 of tight material that could cut off water. 

 And if it had no supply it would run out 

 and leave the underground bed all dry. 



Having a discharge and supply it be- 

 came in all respects like a flume or open 

 aqueduct above ground but filled with sand. 

 Such a flume with a capacity of one hun- 

 dred inches will run full to within a few 

 inches of the lower end when it drops off 

 in the well known curve. The radius of 

 this curve depends on the depth of the 

 water. In no way can you make its effect 

 reach back of a certain point. 



Now fill the flume with sand or gravel 

 until it will carry but one inch. The re- 

 sult is in no way changed except that the 

 curve will depend mainly if not wholly 

 upon the resisting nature of the material 

 instead of on the volume of the water. In 

 any event it will not vary much from the 

 curve in water alone and is the same curve 

 slightly changed by the new conditions. 

 In no way can this be changed except by 

 altering the material or the supply from 

 above. You may enlarge the outlet in any 

 way, or break off section after section of 

 the flume, the same curve will be there 

 and cannot be extended back of a few feet 

 from the end and often only a few inches. 



PRINCIPLE OP UNDERGROUND STREAMS. 



The application of this principle to an 

 underground stream was certain. Moving 

 water whether in the form of a stream, or 

 a series of streams, or in a sheet, depends 



on the same principles; so much supply 

 from above, so much gravity tending to 

 draw it down the slope of the country, so 

 much friction tending to hold it back. It 

 could no more escape the influence of 

 friction than it could that of gravity, and 

 no mode of facilitating the discharge could 

 make the supply from above move any fast- 

 er against the friction of the gravel and 

 sand through which it had to travel a 

 thousand feet or more from the nearest 

 land of the plaintiffs to the drainage flume 

 of the defendant. The plane of the sur- 

 face slope of the underground sheet would 

 continue, the same as in the flume filled 

 with sand, until near the outlet when it 

 would drop off more rapidly. But this 

 dropping would extend back but a short 

 distance and four hundred feet was the 

 longest estimate made by any of us. 



A curious confirmation was at hand. If 

 the water fell four feet in two months over 

 an area of some five hundred acres because 

 of the flume and cut it must then have 

 gone into the cut. It was easy to calcu- 

 late that such a fall on such an area in 

 such a time would have equalled about five 

 hundred inches steady flow during that 

 time. And this must have been in addition 

 to the five hundred inches which continued 

 to flow eighteen months after the cut was 

 made and the wells had fallen. The same 

 was the case with the cut for the exten- 

 sion. The fall of sixteen inches during 

 that time called for a flow of nearly two 

 hundred inches in the extension cut dur- 

 ing the six weeks it was building. And 

 this would be in addition to the amount 

 that has ever since been flowing from it. 

 The flow in both should have been aboat 

 double during the falling of the water in 

 the wells. 



What became of this water if such were 

 the case? The builders of the flume and 

 cut had a weir on all the time, taking the 

 measurement every day of its progress be- 

 fore there was any lawsuit dreamed of and 

 they never discovered it. The plaintiffs 

 had evidently been laying their plans for a 

 lawsuit from the first, were living within 



