102 TREE PLANTER'S MANUAL. 



water, would it not be a feasible conquest over the drouth? Such an irri- 

 gation system, so absolutely needed, is no more gigantic than what is 

 already operative in the Rocky Mountain region, or anciently in the valley 

 of the Euphrates. Nor would the cost be any greater. The policy should 

 be to irrigate experimentally and avoid reaction. We can congratulate 

 ourselves on the fact that we have innumerable spring brooks scattered 

 over the state on the prairie as well as woodland, which, if utilized and 

 secured in spacious basins, would afford suitable water for the bottom 

 lands through which they flow. We have not yet tested our artesian sup- 

 ply, as in the Dakotas, where it proves so successful, even if the water has 

 to be forced up to elevated tanks. It requires but slight descent of land 

 for irrigational purposes. 



AMOUNT OF WATER NEEDED. 



The amount of water required is far less than is generally supposed. The 

 usual standard is a miner's inch, and one-half to three-fourths of an inch 

 per acre will suffice when economically applied. The actual size of an 

 irrigational ditch, carrying from fifty to one hundred inches of water, is from 

 three to four feet wide and twelve to eighteen inches in depth, and this re- 

 quires for available flow but one-eighth to one-quarter of an inch per rod. 



INCREASE OF CROPS. 



Hon. S. M, Emery, formerly of Minnesota, now director of Montana Ex- 

 periment Station. Bozeman, Mont., states in his address on "Irrigation for 

 Minnesota," delivered before the annual meeting of the State Horticultural 

 Society, 1894, that after the ditches are once constructed the cost per acre 

 for applying the water will not exceed $1 per annum, and that lands, as a 

 rule, need irrigating but once, twice or thrice in a season, depending on 

 soil conditions and locations; "that each acre upon which you can conduct 

 water means four acres, as its production is increased from two to three- 

 fold from irrigation; and, if this be true, the acre that by the same labor 

 doubles or triples its yield, is as valuable as four times the land, consider- 

 ing the material reduction in labor involved in the cultivation of four acres 

 as compared to that of one." 



INITIAL STEP DY THE IRRIGATION CONGRESS. 



Here is a subjoined extract from an address to the people of the United 

 States, prepared by the National Irrigation Congress at its recent session 

 at Los Angeles, Cal., alike applicable to Minnesota: 



"We favor the limitation of the amount of land that may be taken up by 

 settlers under systems of irrigation to forty acres, and predict that in the 

 future it will be found desirable to reduce the amount still further, and we 

 favor the restriction of the privilege of taking up public lands to citizens 

 of the United States. This has become necessary with increase of popula- 

 tion, and is also desirable as rendering more difficult the acquirement of 

 lands for speculative purposes. We call attention to the growing im- 

 portance of the storage problem, and demand rigid national and state 

 supervision of dams and other works, in order to protect life and property. 



