168 BOARD OF AGRICULTUEE. [Jan. 



Is there some one here who will volunteer to send to the 

 Experiment Station at Amherst some good specimens of 

 club-footed cabbages and turnips? I do not want a large 

 specimen, because it is for microscopic study, and will take 

 but a little piece. If any one here will volunteer to send 

 me such a sample at Amherst, I will be very greatly obliged. 



The Chairman. Our next lecture is upon Irrigation, by 

 a gentleman who not only practices it extensively upon 

 market garden crops, but has the past season journeyed 

 across the continent to observe the workings of the systems 

 of irrigation in Colorado and California. He is abundantly 

 able to interest the audience : W. W. Rawson of Arlington. 



IRRIGATION. 



BY ■W. W. RAAVSON OF ARLINGTON. 



In the growing of crops of all kinds, there are many things 

 necessary for their development. Some of the principal 

 ones are air, light, heat and moisture. No one of these is 

 of more importance and more necessary to their develop- 

 ment than moisture. 



From sev^enty-five to ninety-five per cent of the compo- 

 sition of vegetables is moisture. Of fruits, seventy to 

 eighty-five per cent; of grasses, seventy to eighty per cent. 



To grow these to perfection, more moisture is necessary 

 than furnished by rains and the atmosphere. The supplying 

 of moisture by artificial means is called irrigation, which is 

 one of the means used for producing fertility in the soil. 



It was first used in Egypt nearly four thousand years ago, 

 and has since been used in all countries. The Romans took 

 the lead at the beginning of the present century. The pools 

 which Solomon constructed were to hold water, which was to 

 be used for irrigating the soil. In Ecclesiastes, the second 

 chapter, the fourth, fifth and sixth verses, we read: "I 

 made me great works ; I builded me houses ; I planted me 

 vineyards : I made me gardens and orchards, and I planted 

 trees in them of all kind of fruits : I made me pools of water, 

 to water therewith the wood that bringeth forth trees." 

 From then to the present time nearly all nations have had 

 more or less use for irrigation. 



