SKEPAGK AND DRAINAGE. 439 



After ten or fifteen years of constant irrigation, it 

 began to be noticed that the seepage waters of these 

 larger canals were working most damaging results 

 upon the river flats. The condition of many thousand 

 acres may justly be designated as water-sick — that is, 

 they have been rendered sick, as the saying goes, by 

 the constant seepage of water as described, and the con- 

 sequence is the formation of pools, sloughs, bogs, and 

 marshy places in s'pots where the waters naturally 

 settle in seeking a level, while a superabundance of 

 saturation prevails throughout all soil coming within 

 the scope of their baneful influence. When soil becomes 

 filled to an extent exceeding a 70 per cent, saturation 

 it may then be termed water-sick, or perhaps can be 

 better understood by the term water-logged. It may 

 be well at this point to interpolate the f adl that no land 

 can be profitably irrigated that has not either natural 

 or artificial drainage. While no plant can grow with- 

 out water, too much water will drown and kill it. 

 The same law that governs the animal governs the 

 vegetable kingdom as well. Neither can live without 

 water, and too much very soon kills. It is just as 

 essential for the roots of plants to come in contadl with 

 the air as it is for the tops, and any process that tends 

 to draw the atmosphere out of the air-cells and fill them 

 with water is detrimental to the growth of all vegetable 

 life, except perhaps such things as foxtail, water- 

 grass, the iris, and other aquatic plants. 



Action of Seepage. — In irrigating, more water is 

 often applied than the crop uses, and while the roots, 

 are taking up what they necessarily require some flows 

 ofif on the surface, some evaporates into the air, and 



