AGRICULTURE IN OTHER LANDS. 



By ARTHUR J. PKRKINS. Principal Roseworthy Agricultural College. 



EGYPT. 



The feature which must most strongly impress the visitor interested in 

 agricultural matters is that rural Egypt is one vast object lesson to the 

 irrigationist. Here is a country that is to all intents and purposes practically 

 rainless supporting, nevertheless, a nourishing rural population ; and which, 

 if we except the Suez Canal and the much-fleeced tourist, is wholly dependent 

 for its revenues on the agricultural produce of the soil. The total area of 

 Egypt proper is given as about 400,000 square miles, the great bulk of which is a 

 barren waste, carrying not a vestige of vegetation from one end of the year to 

 the other. Of this area in 1909 there were about 6,500,000 acres under culti- 

 vation 4,000,000 acres in the Delta and about 2,500,000 acres in the narrow 

 Valley of the Nile. It is calculated that the raising of the Assouan Dam will 

 have the effect of winning over from the desert an additional 1,000,000 acres. 

 By themselves these figures convey but an inadequate image of the facts as 

 they may be observed here on the one side an absolutely desert waste, and 

 contiguous with it a few million acres of marvellous fertility, the productive- 

 ness of which cannot probably be matched anywhere else in the world. One 

 cannot describe cultivated Egypt better than by the statement that it has 

 all the appearance of a huge vegetable garden, from every corner of which the 

 utmost is extracted by the industrious cultivator. 



This great productiveness Egypt owes, as is well known to everybody, to 

 the Nile both directly and indirectly. The Nile in the course of ages has 

 built up a soil of great fertility, which it continues to enrich and supply with 

 all essential moisture at the present time. I had imagined that there must be 

 in Egypt some form of unirrigated agriculture practised. I am informed, 

 however, that, apart from a few sandy acres occasionally sown to barley in 

 the neighborhood of Alexandria, this is not the case. That this should be 

 so will readily be understood when it is stated that, with a very high average 

 temperature, the rainfall at Alexandria to the north of the Delta is about 8in., 

 whilst that of Cairo at its southern apex is only lin. Agriculture, therefore, 

 in its widest sense appears to be possible only on such lands as come within 

 the reach of the Nile waters. 



The complete absence of rain both in winter and summer renders necessary 

 the use of irrigation waters for both winter and summer sown crops. In 



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