6 PREFACE. 



water has no salable value, immediately finds purchasers 

 at $50 to $200 per acre, when a supply of water has been 

 brought to it, can not fail to call attention to irrigation 

 and quicken enterprise in its practice. 



The endeavor to popularize information upon this sub- 

 ject and hasten the benefits that may result from its 

 practice, is a work not without value or honor, even if it 

 may have no other effect than to point out the way which 

 some more competent laborer may follow with greater 

 success. 



The present is a favorable time for such an attempt. 

 At the time these lines are written the expected season- 

 able rains are withheld in California, and the harvest of 

 1877 is endangered. Prices of wheat are rising ; nume- 

 rous flocks are in danger for want of water, and distress 

 is threatened in many quarters. Farmers and gardeners 

 in the East, who for some years past, for want of rain, 

 have seen the profit of their labors lost, are seeking some 

 cheap and effective methods of irrigation, by which such 

 calamity may be avoided in future. In the great West 

 millions of fertile acres are waiting to be reclaimed from 

 aridity, that they may furnish homes for enterprising 

 young men, and help to supply Europe with bread. 



Irrigation is the only resource which can provide for 

 all these contingencies. To show what has already been 

 done ; how it has been done ; how our circumstances 

 match with or differ from those in which the older 

 systems have been applied ; to offer plans and suggest 

 cautions which occur to one who is both a farmer and an 

 engineer, are the aims of the following pages. That the 

 work may be at least of some help to his fellow laborers 

 the agriculturists of America is the earnest wish of 



THE Author. 

 HacTcensacky N. J., January, 1877. 



