132 IRRIGATION FARMING. 



twenty-eight feet wide, seven feet deep, and is set on a 

 grade of from five to eight feet to the mile, its total 

 length being 2,640 feet and its capacity 1,184 second 

 feet. The timbers supporting the flooring are suffi- 

 ciently heavy and abundant to render the work sub- 

 stantial, while the sills supporting it are well braced 

 and framed. The side braces supporting the uprights 

 are peculiarly and expensively housed by letting them 

 into iron castings or shoes at either end. These shoes, 

 bolted to the woodwork of the flume, cannot be said to 

 have increased the life of the stru(?ture, as they have 

 caught rain or leakage water and have thus added 

 greatly to the deterioration of the wood. 



Pluming Across a River. — Another notable 

 flume is .shown in Fig. 34. It is a wooden flume across 

 the Pecos river in New Mexico. The bottom of this 

 great flume is 40 feet above the river-bed, it is 25 feet 

 wide in the clear, 8 feet deep, 475 feet long, and rests 

 on substantial trestlework with spans 16 feet in length. 

 Across the river-bed this flume is founded on cribs drift- 

 bolted to the solid bed-rock of the river and filled with 

 rock. The abutments of this flume at its jundlion with 

 the canal, which runs on top of the terreplein, con- 

 sists of wooden wings set back a distance of 12 feet 

 into the earth, well braced, and supported on anchor 

 piling and filled with earth. The planking of these 

 wings is two inches in thickness. The flume rests on 

 five sets of 12 x 12 timbers forming each bent of the 

 trestle, and these are well cross-braced. On them rests 

 a cap piece 12x12 inches, and on this are ten longi- 

 tudinal stringers 16 feet in length, extending from one 

 bent of the trestle to the other. These stringers are 



