I04 



This city, piobably more than any other in the U. S., 

 owes its existence to tlie results of irrigation. The water 

 is brought down from the mountain and conducted on 

 either side of every street and the ground around each house 

 coukl be watered from these streams. Fruit trees and 

 shrubbery weie everywhere abundant and in a good 

 healthy condition. Thus far we have considered those 

 sections of the country where irrigation was a necessity, 

 where it is water or No crop. 



Now we propose to discuss the question where oft-times 

 it is a poor and a short crop for want of sufficient water at 

 the right time. Every observing man of three score or 

 more years, will admit that the climate of New England has 

 changed much in the last fifty years, and that crops, as a 

 general thing, suffer mere and oftener for want of sufficient 

 moisture. Our storage capacity has been well nigh de- 

 stroyed by denuding our hills of their natural forests, and 

 the rivers and brooks of New England are becoming yearly 

 smaller and smaller. Any of us can remember of plenty of 

 bathing places where the boys used to learn to swim and 

 to dive as well, where now if you wanted to wash a sheep, 

 you would have to dam up the brook, and wait at least 

 over night for the pond to fill. 



Many a farm on the hillside which is now being aban- 

 doned, where the rainfall coald be stored at small expense 

 for use on the crop in time of drouth, could be worked with 

 profit. 



Agriculture in New England is becoming more and more 

 intensive each year. The effort is not to see how many 

 acres you can cultivate, but how mucli can be raised to the 

 single acre of those crops which sell for the best prices in 

 the nearest market. Competition is so great, that all quick 

 selling crops must be the best of their kind, and such can 

 only be procured by one continuous and rapid growth, any 



