'LEE IRRIGATION AGE. 



fine earth into mortar. Now, all ready to puddle, turn the water into 

 the reserroir and begin to puddle at one edge, puddling carefully 

 along this edge until the earth shall have been reduced to perfect 

 mortar and continue to work toward the other side until you have com- 

 pleted the entire bottom of the reservoir as far up on the embankment 

 as you can work with your team to good advantage. 



If you have done the work thoroughly and without stopping after 

 you have once commenced until it is all finished, your reservoir will 

 then cement into a good solid bottom that will hold very well. After 

 you have your reservoir thus made and puddled, the next thing is to 

 provide some means to prevent the embankments from being washed 

 down by the continuous waves of water which are caused by the wind. 

 Many different schemes have been employed for this purpose and none 

 of them with that degree of success that it is hoped will be obtained 

 by further experimenting in the near future. Some of the Irrigators 

 use sod for protecting the walls on the inside by laying the sodded 

 blocks in the same manner now employed by landscape gardners in 

 sodding lawns and houseyards. 



If stone can be had, the better way will be to rip rap the embank- 

 ment on the inside, as it would be the more permanent and as a rule 

 give better satisfaction. Some Irrigators have used planks thrown 

 onto the water, which will float and be driven by the wind to the op- 

 posite side of the reservoir from which the wind blows, the planks 

 acting as a break- water to prevent the walls from being destroyed. 



When the wind changes these boards blow over to the other side 

 again and thus continue to protect the walls, no matter from which 

 direction the wind blows. This last plan of boards is not as 'good 

 as the sodding in the estimation of many who have used both systems. 



Another plan is to rip-rap the inside walls with brush and weight 

 them down with stone, or hold them down by staking them. In this 

 case the twigs and limbs of small trees and bushes are laid down 

 against the wall in a compact mass, and as thick a mass as the supply 

 of the material will permit. This has been found to give very good 

 results. If the walls have been sodded inside, instead of being pro- 

 tected by boards, or brush, or stone rip-rap, it will be well if some 

 water-grass can be procured from sloughs and planted in the seams 

 between the blocks of sod, so that by the time the sod rots out the 

 water-grass may have taken firm root, so as to form a living protection 

 to the embankment. 



The outside walls of the embankment may be sodded, or they may 

 be planted with such grass as Irrigators prefer, such as blue grass, or 

 other tame grasses. To maintain your reservoir in good order never 

 allow it to go dry. If you do the bottom will dry out and crack open, 

 which will require it to be replowed and repuddled, requiring just as 



