182 



THE IKRIGATION AGE. 



year with another the crops were worth only $2.40 an 

 acre more, that would be 8 per cent on the investment, 

 a great interest in these days. And with good farming 

 it may always be more than that. Many tiles have been 

 carelessly laid and failed, but there is no need of this. 

 Attend to the matter yourself. See that every one is 

 hard enough to stand; that it rings clear when struck 

 against another one. See that water runs uniformly in 

 the groove in bottom of ditch before you put the tiles 

 in. These are the most important matters. Now is 

 the time to be getting ready to drain land you put in 

 corn next year. Put in a single drain, if no more, and 

 do it right and watch results. You will soon be satis- 

 fied, if the work is well done and you manage rightly. 

 A man's best efforts are often thrown away on land in 

 need of tile drainage. A good manager may get along 

 fairly, on the average, but he could pay the interest 

 on cost of tile drainage and do much better. He can 

 get larger crops and with greater certainty. He will 

 be a poor manager if he does not make this chance bring 

 him $3 an acre extra on his cultivated land, that is 10 

 per cent on the cost of tiling, on the average. He will 

 be an extra good manager if he can make underdrained, 

 level clay land pay him half that interest on its value, 

 net, on the average. Now I have no tiles to sell, no 

 interest in the matter, only to be truly helpful to those 

 who have not had experience along this line. 



ELEVATING AND SCREENING MACHINERY FOR 

 HANDLING GRAVEL. 



The equipment shown in the illustrations consists 

 of an elevator and revolving screen mounted on an 

 ordinary flat car, for digging sand and gravel from 

 a loose bank. 



The elevator is placed to one side of the car, be- 

 ing composed of continuous elevator buckets mounted 

 on an endless chain, which extends some two feet below 

 the track level and projecting in front of the car six 



center of the car and covered with two different sizes 

 of wire cloth to obtain two different products. The 

 first cloth that the gravel comes in contact with is 

 fine, thereby securing sand. As the screen is set on an 

 angle, the particles that are too large to pass through 



Elevator and Screening Machine for handling Gravel. 



feet. The car is run directly to the face of the bank 

 and owing to the loose nature of the gravel handled, 

 a man being placed at the top of the bank can very 

 easily supply the elvator with a sufficient amount of 

 gravel to keep it filled at all times. 



The gravel is raised a sufficient height so that it 

 can be spouted to the revolving screen placed in the 



Elevator and Screening Machine for handling gravel. 



the first section will move by gravity to the next, 

 which has larger openings and the large stones or tail- 

 ings pass over the end of the screen and are spouted to 

 the ground. 



Alongside of the screen are placed two contractors' 

 dump cars, into which the sand and gravel are dis- 

 charged by means of belt conveyors placed directly 

 beneath the revolving screen. 



This equipment has been in use the past summer 

 in securing sand and gravel for the construction of a 

 large concrete bridge, which has only just been com- 

 pleted. 



The outfit was furnished by the Jeffrey Manu- 

 facturing Company, of Columbus, Ohio, who make a 

 specialty of machinery of this type. 



BROUGHT BY THE POSTMAN. 



Letters from Correspondents to The Irrigation Age. 



GRAND JUNCTION, COLO., March 18, 1905. 

 EDITOR IRRIGATION AGE : 



The irrigation system of the Grand Valley at Grand 

 Junction, Colo., is second to none in point of cheapness, service 

 and water supply. 



The present canal covers 40.000 acres of land on the north 

 side of Grand River, with a system of ditches eighty-four miles 

 in length and a capacity of 400 second feet. 



Water is turned into the canal April 1st of each year and 

 flows continually until cold weather interferes, in December, 

 usually about the 15th. 



The duty of water is one cubic foot per second for eighty 

 acres of land, and this amount has been found sufficient for 

 all crops in this soil and climate. 



The average cost of water per acre per annum is 62 1 /, 

 cents. 



The ditch is owned by the farmers and operated by them 

 as a mutual company, each farmer owning stock in the com- 

 pany in proportion to the number of acres which he has in 

 cultivation. 



A water right or water stock now sells at $12.50 per acre. 

 The stock, not being attached to any particular piece of land, 

 finds a ready sale in the open market at that figure. 



The farmers bought the canal eleven years ago, since 



