52 ORANGE CULTURE IN CALIFORNIA. 



irrigation, a habit conceived in culpable ignorance and brought 

 forth in inexcusable indolence, t's one of the most pernicious in 

 tree culture. 



"It is a fact that nothing else so compacts and solidifies the 

 soil as does water; and this is particularly the case when water 

 is poured into basins around the trees and allowed to soak away 

 into the ground. When after-cultivation is not practiced, the 

 soil 'no matter what its character, no matter how soft and 

 friable soon becomes close and compact, hard and unyielding, 

 and in many cases, under the sun's influence, great fissures are 

 formed to a depth sufficient to damage the young rootlets. Few 

 soils, if any, will long bear the neglect of after-cultivation, and 

 all are benefited by it. The claim sometimes set up, that the 

 fertility of the soil is continually renewed by irrigation, is not 

 justified by experience. It is doubtless true that in the regions 

 of the Nile, that are subject to an annual overflow from floods 

 in the region of its sources, by which large vegetable "and sedi- 

 mentary deposits are carried down and spread over the land, 

 this annual deposit perpetually keeps up the fertility of the soil ; 

 but the waters of our springs and rivers, flowing in no instance 

 more than a few miles, and fed as they doubtless are by the 

 meltings of the driven snow, or their waters distilled by God's 

 own hand amid the inaccessible peaks of our loftiest mountains, 

 pure, bright and sparkling as the dew-drop that glistens in the 

 morning sunlight waters pure as these contain no sediment 

 rich enough to supply the drafts on the soil's fertility. 



"To those of other sections of our country, where rains are 

 so abundant and frequent as to render irrigation unnecessary 

 and who are therefore disposed to commiserate our condition 

 on account of the extra labor imposed on us by our climatic 

 conditions and the necessity of irrigation in our choicest pro- 

 ductions, let us, in acknowledgment of their well-meant but 

 mistaken sympathy, point them to some of the practical results 

 of irrigation, as mirrored in the world's history. Let us point 

 them to that most ancient of all empires, Egypt, pre-historic in 

 its beginning, the cradle of the arts and sciences, the feeder of 

 God's people in famine-stricken Canaan, and of whose magnifi- 

 cence and grandeur we obtain but faint glimpses in the remains 



