A CONGRESSIONAL COMMISSION. 173 



law ; no statutory provisions having as yet been made to 

 meet the necessarily involved interests which will be 

 affected by it. Perhaps the only decision which relates 

 to this is cited in the Massachusetts Agricultural Report 

 of 1872, as follows : 



"It has sometimes been made a question whether a 

 riparian proprietor can direct water from a running stream 

 for purposes of irrigation. 



" The language of the Court as best defining the prin- 

 ciples governing this subject is as follows, to wit: That 

 an individual owning a spring on his land, from which 

 water flows in a current through his neighbor's land, 

 would have the right to use the whole of it, if necessary, 

 to satisfy his natural wants. He may consume all the 

 water for his domestic purposes, including water for his 

 stock. If he desires to use it for irrigation, and there is 

 a lower proprietor to whom its use is essential to supply 

 his natural wants, or for his stock, he must use the water 

 so as to leave enough for such lower proprietor. Where 

 the stream is small and does not supply more than suffic- 

 ient to answer the natural wants of the different pro- 

 prietors living on it, none of the proprietors can use the 

 water for irrigation or manufactures." 



This is so clearly inadequate to meet the urgent neces- 

 sities of the case, that the immediate attention of Con- 

 gress, and the various State Legislatures, is peremptorily 

 called for. Fortunately, a beginning has been made, 

 and a Commission was organized by an Act of Con- 

 gress, approved March 3, 1873, to examine the great 

 valleys of California, with reference to the construction 

 of a system of irrigation. The report of this Com- 

 mission is published in the yearly volume of the De- 

 partment of Agriculture for 1874. The conclusions 

 reached may be seriously questioned in many points, but 

 on the whole are, as might have been expected, favorable 

 both to the profitableness and feasibility of irrigation 



