FERTILITY SURVEY OF THE EGYPTIAN DELTA. 



By B. F. E. KEELING, M.A. 



Director of Physical Services, Survey Department, 

 Ministry of Finance, Egypt. 



THE Egyptian Government is at present engaged on 

 improving radically the drainage of the lower-lying parts 

 of the Delta, and it was decided to make a detailed 

 survey of these areas which would record the present 

 condition of the land. The survey has a two-fold object. 

 Firstly, such a survey will give the authorities consider- 

 able assistance in laying out the details of their drainage 

 plans, and secondly, after the new drains and pumps have 

 been at work for some years it will be possible to assess 

 the improvement effected in different localities. 



It is eventually hoped to improve the drainage of the 

 whole country, but naturally this can only be done by 

 degrees, and the first areas to be dealt with are the central 

 part of the Delta and the most western portion draining 

 into Lake Mariut, and accordingly these two areas have 

 been surveyed. 



The procedure adopted is as follows : 



The field parties are provided with maps on the scale 

 of I : 10,000 on which the boundaries of all the ownership 

 plots are marked. The surveyor takes this map and 

 crosses and re-crosses the land shown upon it, marking 

 on the map his opinion of the value of the land. Five 

 categories of land are recognized good, medium, bad, 

 uncultivated and under reclamation. On the field-sheets 

 certain other information is recorded, in particular on the 

 uncultivated land notes are made if large quantities of 

 grass or bush are present. 



Thene is, of course, no hard-and-fast line between the 

 first three categories of good, medium and bad, and in 

 particular the first two overlap, the quality often depend- 



