98 IKKIGATIOX. 



ing two crops of hay in the year, besides some pasture 

 when the springs cease to flow and the ground is capable 

 of bearing cattle. Upon hundreds of farms in Pennsyl- 

 vania, and in the valley of Virginia which has been 

 settled by farmers from the former State, there are water- 

 ed meadows of this character which yield a steady crop 

 of hay, year after year, and possess a sod which promises 

 to remain productive indefinitely, with its present treat- 

 ment. This accidental use of the water has been in 

 reality forced upon the farmer. Had it not been brought 

 into a channel and confined to one or two canals, it would 

 have flowed irregularly over the surface and have formed 

 a morass. The process really has been one of drainage 

 rather than of irrigation, and the reclamation of the sur- 

 face rather than its studied improvement. The methods 

 of watering meadows in common use are illustrated in fig. 

 42, in which a small stream is led down a slope, and at 

 fig. 43, in which the stream is dammed and the water 

 carried laterally as far as possible. 



If such elementary and imperfect methods have been 

 successful and profitable, how much more shall skillful 

 and scientific irrigation add to the yield of our most 

 valuable crop, and render possible the creation of perma- 

 nent meadows, upon which grass may be grown in the 

 greatest luxuriance, at an almost nominal expense ! 

 Numberless opportunities to make irrigated meadows 

 present themselves everywhere. Far from being a matter 

 of nicely arranged quantities of water, equally distributed 

 at certain definite periods, as with other field crops ; on 

 the contrary, the irrigation of a meadow simply consists 

 in causing a supply of water to pass over the grass at such 

 periods as may be convenient ; the convenience being 

 only loosely circumscribed by times and seasons. It does 

 not matter if the soil becomes saturated with water, it is 

 only by the grossest negligence or ignorance that injury 

 can be done. There is no danger, although the slope of 



