THE IRRIGATION AGE. 359 



lifeless and useless. To make a mass of flesh a living, working body, 

 the blood must not simply flow through a few main arteries, but must 

 be conducted throughout the whole body, and;penetrate to every cell, 

 from main artery to branch arteries, and then to capillaries. Simi- 

 larly, in an arid country, the water in a stream or river should not be 

 held to belong to the land forming its banks alone but to every por- 

 tion of land to which it can be conveyed. The river artery can dis- 

 tribute its life-blood to canals or ditches as branch arteries; and these 

 in their turn to laterals and watercourses, as capillaries, to be con- 

 veyed to every field and to make the land a living, producing country. 

 Under these conditions, riparian rights are an anomaly, and require 

 to be superseded by the right of the whole neighboring land to the 

 beneficial action of the water. The lands bordering a river will always 

 retain the natural advantages they possess of proximity to the source 

 of the supply of water and the consequent power to bring the water 

 on the land with a small expenditure of labor and money; but that 

 they should be given or allowed to claim the exclusive right to the 

 use of the water in arid regions is really indefensible. To insist that 

 the law of water rights applicable to and permissable in States with 

 ample rainfall must necessarily be applied to arid States is to enact 

 again the old story of Procrustes and his bed. 



It should be clearly understood that meteorological conditions 

 vary very much throughout the great plains of North India. The 

 regular rainy season lasts from the middle of June to the middle of 

 September, and during this time the monsoon from the Bay of Bengal 

 gives the Province of Bengal a heavy rainfall sufficient to grow rice 

 with extensively without the aid of irrigation. As the monsoon 

 sweeps up country to the northwest, along and parallel to the Hima- 

 laya range of mountains, it gradually parts with its moisture and the 

 rainfall decreases as it proceeds. Throughout the Northwest Prov- 

 inces the rainfall is sufficient for maturing ordinary crops; but as the 

 Panjab is reached, the belt of country lying to the South of the Hima- 

 layas receives just enough rain for growing crops on, but the tracts 

 further to the South and Southwest obtain very little and are desert; 

 for the rainfall diminishes with the distance from these mountains. 

 Wherever the average annual rainfall is less than 15 inches cultiva- 

 tion becomes impossible without irrigation from wells or canals. 

 About four-fifths of the total annual fall comes in the three months of 

 the hot weather rainy season; of the remaining portion nearly all 

 usually comes in one or two spells of several days each, in December, 

 January, or February. Occasional showers are received at other 

 times. In the belt of country which receives a little less than 15 

 inches of annual rainfall, a plentiful crop of fine grass grows, suffi_ 

 cient to support large herds of cattle and flocks of goats and sheep > 



