212 IRRIGATION FARMING. 



on * ' Devices and Appliances, ' ' with an illustration 

 showing the machine at work. 



In lieu of one of these implements it is advan- 

 tageous to use a horse marker, something after the 

 style of the old corn marker. Take a straight log 

 some six or eight inches in diameter and twelve feet 

 long. With a two-inch auger bore holes for the teeth 

 two feet apart. Make the teeth a foot long, having 

 them flat and about as broad as a man's hand. Turn 

 the flat side forward. Be sure to set the teeth so that 

 they slope backward. This will prevent the seed 

 being torn out of the ground. The extra labor in 

 going over a field with such a marker will save a vast 

 amount of work when irrigating time comes, as the 

 water will follow the small furrows made by the teeth 

 and at the same time seep from one to the other, so 

 that the ground will all be watered and there will be 

 no sun-baking at the surface. 



The Depth of Soaking. — In the absence of some 

 methods of surface corrugation we will presume that 

 the irrigator knows how to make the old-fashioned 

 ditches through the grain fields. The water being 

 turned into these ditches, all that is necessary to do is 

 to put checks in them in succession so that the later 

 check will make the water overlap at least ten feet the 

 land wet by the flow from the preceding dam. Dams 

 are now nearly always made by means of canvas nailed 

 to a pole or board wide enough to rest well on each 

 bank, and. which is fully described in this work under 

 the chapter on *' Devices and Appliances." If the cur- 

 rent is not very rapid, but little earth is needed on the 

 canvas, as the weight of the water on the lower up- 



