INK IRR1GA1ION AGE. 309 



'Other near the trees. By the time the roots occupy most of the space 

 you can let it run in the furrow straight down. 



And now begins the most difficult part, which is to get the water 

 through to the lower end and no farther. Most of our good people 

 think this cannot be done. If they will offer a premium of 25 to the 

 man who does it successfully for one whole season the thing will be 

 done. There is no more sense in a man's letting water run away 

 from him than to let his horse run away from him or with him. The 

 difficulty is in favor of the water. It needs no training; it only takes 

 guiding. You would not think of putting a fine colt into the hands of 

 an inexperienced rancher's man without mental resources. I have 

 seen men who pretended to be irrigating have a story book with them 

 and spend fully half their time under a tree reading. They would 

 get up and walk along the flume and clean the moss from the holes, 

 and regulate as they called it. At the same time the water at the 

 lower end would be running to waste in some furrows, while it was 

 not half way down in others. On my way home, a few days ago, I 

 noticed a grove from which the water had just been turned off. It 

 was a good grove, and usually well watered, but I counted sixteen 

 furrows dry at the lower end, and most of these were, as usual, next 

 to the trees. I must explain that this work was done by a man of 

 very little experience. We still have rivers of waste water, but the 

 man who received 4, 500 for his crop of ten acres the present season 

 had the least waste water. 



The trees should be numbered at the upper and lower end of the 

 field, so as to correspond. As soon as the water is fairly under way 

 the man in charge should inspect the flow by walking across near the 

 lower end, and with a tablet and pencil make a record by numbers of 

 the flow, and then go to the flume and shut down, or add water, 

 according to its records below. There is a mystery in how one furrow 

 will allow water to pass on so much faster than its neighbor. With 

 an open soil and a heavy fall I would recommend not to run water 

 farther than twenty rods, as it will wash if you run a stream large 

 enough to go far. It will cut 'and wash away your loam, and not 

 spread laterally. Put m another flume and start again slowly, so 

 that the water will soon run clear. Water with slickens in it does not 

 spread laterally near so rapidly as clear water. After it has run a 

 few hours and the ground is wet, heavy and settled, a larger stream 

 can be run with safety. 



Furrow deep from the start, as the main idea of irrigation is to 

 get the water down to where the roots naturally live. If you furrow 

 shallow your top-soil will be wet and you will think well of yourself, 

 but in a few months or a year your roots will come up, and will be 

 dried by the hot sun of July and August, and your trees will show 

 sorrow before the thirty days come around If you could wet the 



