12 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1897. 



and gives promise that the periodical famines of that eouutry will 

 soon belong to the history of the past. 



Without attempting to give any adequate idea of the great works 

 achieved, and in progress there, it may be stated that at the end of 

 the year 1SS8 there liad been completed in India 5,520 miles of main 

 canals, and 17,150 miles of tributaries, irrigating over 10,000,000 

 acres, besides minor works watering 2,000,000 acres more. 



IRRIGATION IN EGYPT. 



The lauds of Lower Egypt, as is well known, are annually enriched 

 by the overflow of the Nile, which every year leaves a deposit of silt 

 that keeps the soil constantly fertilized : but if this deposit becomes 

 dry and baked it is no longer useful, and the crops fail ; so that for 

 many centuries the inhabitants have resorted to various remedies. 

 At the present time the Government is largely engaged in this work. 

 In 1885 the ''Pasha" made an agreement with the Irrigation Society 

 of Behcra, by which it undertook to pay $210,000 a year for thirty 

 years for a supply up to a certain level; with a maximum of about 

 2,004 cubic feet per second at low Nile, lifted by two powerful steam- 

 pumps into the canal of Behera ; besides which, "In 1864 the number 

 of wooden water-wheels used in Central and Lower Egypt was about 

 50,000, turned by 200,000 oxen, and managed by 100,000 persons, 

 who watered 4,500,000 acres. 



IRRIGATION IN WESTERN AFRICA. 



Perhaps the most wonderful feat of irrigation is that of a portion of 

 the desert of Sahara. This desert occupies a large portion of Western 

 and Northwestern Africa, lying just south of the provinces of Mo- 

 rocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, and covers an area of fifteen degrees 

 north latitude by twenty-five degrees of longitude, including many 

 millions of acres of barren saud with an occasional oasis ; it has been 

 for thousands of years looked upon as the barrier to commerce and 

 the terror of travellers, who have sometimes been overtaken by its 

 blasting, shifting sands and buried beneath them. All New England 

 school-boys remember the old conundrum : "Why do the Arabs that 

 traverse the desert of Sahara never go hungry? Because they always 

 live on the sand-w(h)ich-i8 under their feet." It was simply a sandy 

 desert, traversed only by occasional merchant caravans, on the con- 

 stant watch for freebooting Arabs. 



But lo ! the magic change ! All the southern half of Algiers, com- 

 prising 330,000 square miles (211,200,000 acres), is beginning to be 



