168 



THE IRRIGATION AGE. 



thirty-five feet above the surface. One at 

 Sperenburg, Prussia, is 1,462 feet deep." 



Wells have been bored in the great 

 Sahara desert. There are seventy-five 

 such wells in one district, 75 degrees 

 fahrenheit, yielding in all 600,000 gallons 

 per hour, with the result that several of 

 these wandering tribes have settled down, 

 constructed villages, planted date-palms 

 and entirely renounced their wandering 

 lives. 



Artesian wells have supplied a portion 

 of the data upon which the internal tem- 

 perature of the earth may be calculated. 

 Being below the zone, affected by the 

 temperature of the seasons, consequently 

 the water is of constant temperature. 

 Thus the Grenelle has a constant tem- 

 perature of 31 degrees, while the mean 

 temperature of the air in the cellar of the 

 Paris Observatory is only 53 degrees. By 

 a series of very careful experiments it is 

 found that the rise in temperature is i 

 degree for each fifty-five feet down to 

 1,800 feet, than i degree for each forty- 

 four feet. 



There are several deep wells in the 

 United States, one at St. Louis 3,843 feet; 

 Columbus 1,775 feet; Louisville 2,086 

 feet, and Charleston, S. C., 1,250 feet. 



It is easy to see that the best of these 

 flowing wells would not furnish sufficient 

 water for rice on the scale grown in South- 

 east Louisiana. The Grenelle, 1,798 feet, 

 only furnishes 516 gallons a minute, while 

 a ten inch well in Louisian furnishes one 

 thousand to fifteen hundred gallons, and a 

 ten inch pump with two to f*ur wells con- 

 nected, will yield 4.500 gallons per min- 

 ute. Seventy-five wells in Africa united 

 give 600.000 gallons per hour, while our 

 forty-eight-inch pumps yield 1,000.000 

 gallons in the same time. Then, our hard 

 clay soil makes it possible to flood so many 

 more acres. The flooding of land with 

 pure wator at a constant temperature just 

 right for vegetable growth opens up an al 

 most limitless field for experimenting and 



practical farming. It lengthens our al- 

 ready long growing season. It provides 

 againstdisaste~,sumrneror winter. Grasses, 

 the most valuable of nature's blessings, 

 will be increased in variery and quality, 

 semi-tropical fruit trees may find special 

 protection in warm currents of water and 

 consequent vapor air; two crops of rice 

 may be quite possible with early and late 

 irrigation made easy by wells. 



Why do we put the wells ten, twenty 

 and fifty feet apart? Because we are ex- 

 perimenting, the idea being that we draw 

 water from a distance and get more. We 

 began with two inch wells, and now six,, 

 eight and ten are more used. E. Scharff 

 of Jennings has a ten inch well just put 

 down at Welsh, La., 118 feet, water rising 

 very near the surface, has flooded over 

 ninety acres of rice in six days' pumping. 

 To cover ninety acres four inches deep in 

 six days requires 2,400 gallons of water a 

 minute. It requires 27,139 gallons to 

 cover one acre an inch deep. 



Artesian does not necessarily mean 

 flowing, but only water not affected by the 

 surface. Again, these wells make it pos- 

 sible to open up every acre in fertile, val- 

 uable farms of the prairie region of South- 

 west Louisiana and Southeast Texas. 

 Who can imagine the beauty and value of 

 suoh a country every acre a garden capa- 

 ble of almost continuous cultivation? This 

 may sound like fiction, but it is only prose 

 of the prosest kind, the reality will re- 

 quire an angel to describe and a Raphael 

 to picture. ' 



EDITORIAL COMMENT. 



The irrigation problem is too large for 

 individual initiation. It is a subject that 

 should be handled by the government. 

 jS'aw Francisco Argonaut 



In his letter to the National Irrigation 

 Congress Governor Roosevelt gave vigor- 

 ous expression to his sympathy with the 

 movement to preserve the forests and ta 



