IRRIGATION PRACTICE AND HIGHWAYS 311 



with mattocks, fresh soil put over the main roots and 

 more water run over it, which penetrated the new 

 soil and gave the main roots a new inducement to 

 produce another outfit of feeding fibers. These grew 

 until they in turn became matted, shut off their own 

 moisture supply and were themselves finally hewn 

 out, this proceeding in endless succession. 



Thus by departing from the methods of their pre- 

 decessors, early American Californians demonstrated 

 that under certain conditions crops can be grown 

 under scant rainfall by tillage instead of irrigation. 

 They also determined another fact of even wider im- 

 portance, viz., that irrigation is not a proper substi- 

 tute for tillage and that instead of being feasible 

 to keep pouring more water to save the cost of till- 

 age, it is required for the thrift of the plant that 

 the more frequent the application of water the more 

 frequent must be the tillage. Instead of a rule of 

 "more water less tillage," which the Spanish set- 

 tlers of California seemed to proceed on, the true 

 rule as demonstrated by their American successors 

 is "more irrigation more tillage." This is now the 

 accepted policy and practice in other irrigated re- 

 gions. 



When the early American settlers found that grain 

 and hay could be grown without irrigation (for the 

 hay consisted almost entirely of grains cut before 

 maturity) ; that such plants and others, such as po- 

 tatoes, beets and other roots, cabbage and most other 

 foliage plants, peas, could be grown in the rainy sea- 

 son wherever frosts were too light to injure them; 



