6*5 



Sometimes the soil where a dam is made is not retentive, but 

 the puddling it receives from the cattle and sheep coming to drink 

 as the water recedes makes the dam perfectly watertight. If 

 possible sites where the soil is not retentive should be avoided, and 

 to make sure a trench should be cut into the subsoil along the course 

 of the proposed dam. Puddling the centre of the dam should not be 

 neglected, and for this purpose there is nothing better than 

 a team of bullocks driven backwards and forwards. If water can- 

 not be had to puddle the centre of the dam the clay may be dry 

 puddled by breaking it up as line as possible, and working it well 

 with the bullocks. 



THE TANK. 



The modern practice in Rivernia and central Australia is to 

 make large tanks. The early settlers in those localities fell into the 

 natural mistake that a tank which held an ample supply of water 

 during fair seasons would hold out during a severe drought. Often 

 instead of enlarging the tank to double or treble its original size, a 

 second small tank was made in the hope that the extra supply 

 would serve all requirements. Sheep farmers have found out by 

 bitter experience that when a long, hot and dry summer follows a 

 dry winter and spring, small tanks are not of the least use, that they 

 are certain to fail long before the dry season is over. 



If it is necessary to examine the sub-soil well in making a dam 

 it is doubly so when a tank is to be excavated. Even when the 



freatest care is exercised the result is at times a disappointment, 

 lany a sheep farmer in central Australia has found when excavat- 

 ing a large tank that he has gone through the clay and come upon 

 a drift, through which the water will run almost as fast as it enters 

 the tank in wet weather. 



Though the tank is often the only way in which a store of 

 water can be conserved, it is nevertheless a wasteful mode of 

 watering stock. To my mind economising the water is of almost as 

 great importance as conserving it in the rirst instance. The sheep 

 going to a tank to drink naturally pollute the water, and as they 

 often go right into the tank much water is carried away in the wool 

 of the under part of the body. This water is lost, and it serves to 

 rot the wool that is saturated by it. 



Mr. Thos. F. Gumming told me that on a station he once held 

 in central Australia he divided 16,000 sheep into two equal 

 portions, which were placed in adjacent paddocks. In one paddock 

 the sheep were watered from troughs pumped from tanks, and in 

 the other they had access to the tanks. At shearing time there was 

 a difference of 7 oz. of wool per head in favor of the sheep watered 

 at the troughs, while the water lasted much longer, and was much 

 cleaner than where the sheep drank at the tank. 



