THE ANTIQUITY OF IRRIGATION. 



BY "INDIANA". 



There is an old story to the effect that once during a long-continued 

 drought in Kansas, I think it was the people met to pray for rain, and 

 one old farmer, fearing that the Lord in answering their petition might 

 construe it to mean any kind of rain, qualified his prayer as follows:: 

 "And, oh Lord; don't send the rain slap-dash; but let it come drizzle 

 drozzle, drizzle drozzle, oh Lord, you know how." That was in a section 

 where they did not irrigate and so had to trust to the rain, often getting 

 the "slap dash" kind that did almost mere harm than good. 



This "slap dash" method of applying water to the soil was one of 

 the early mistakes of irrigators and was the reason why irrigating was 

 not as successful as it should have been. At the present day farmers- 

 have made such progress in this, as in other methods, that they have ar- 

 rived at practically the best way. And why not? Certainly irrigation 

 has been in existence long enough; for when we begin to study the sub- 

 ject, which has now become so important a factor in the agricultural in- 

 dustry of our country, we are impressed more forcibly than ever with 

 the truth of that threadbare, familiar and altogether obnoxious adage, 

 which is ever hurled at the young enthusiast when he thinks he has dis- 

 covered a new truth, a new principle, or made an invention never before 

 thought of. While his cheek is still flushed with the first glow of tri- 

 umph, up rises some hoary-headed sage to assure him of the fact that 

 "There is nothing new under the sun." Notwithstanding the fact that 

 this truth has been quoted so often as to make its pessimistic author 

 turn in his grave, I must again drag it before the unoffending and de- 

 fenseless reader, as the subject of my remarks. 



Solomon, himself, if confronted with an irrigated farm in California, 

 would doubtless have exclaimed, as his mind traveled back some two or 

 three thousand years to the time when the camels of Egypt drew the 

 water that irrigated the land. "There is nothing new under the sun.' 



Irrigation most certainly is not new. Pew farmers stop to think, a& 

 they turn a siream of water through the furrows of their fields, that 

 they are .but following the practice of the Egyptians a practice in use 

 two thousand years before the birth of Christ. At that time the Egypt- 

 ians had extensive systems of canals and artificial lakes for this purpose. 

 In Mesopotamia, China, Persia, India and some other parts of the 

 orient, irrigation was employed thousands and thousands of years ago, 

 and extensive works still exist in such of those as are prosperous at the 

 present day. Certain crops especially rice requires so much moisture 

 that the growers early learned that they could not depend upon the un- 



