THE IKKIGATION AGE. 



305 



I will earnestly endeavor to be in Boise during the session 

 of your congress, and do my best in explaining my em- 

 barrassing position." Mr. Lee will find himself in 

 familiar company during the Boise congress, as he is 

 said to know more public men in railroad, financial, 

 business and political circles than any one, and being an 

 Idaho man at the time of the congress he will constitute 

 one of the special committees on entertainment. 



Hon. Addison Bennett, editor of The Dalles Op- 

 timisi, and known as the "Bill Nye" of the Pacitic 

 Coast, has accepted an invitation to the Fourteenth 

 National Irrigation Congress at Boise, Idaho, Sep- 

 tember 3 to 8, and will deliver an address on the subject, 

 '"Scientific Versus Eeal Irrigation." Mr. Bennett has 

 the happy faculty of combining the keenest wit with the 

 best of logic, and his address will be one of the ora- 

 torical gems of the congress. The Oregon delegation is 

 coming 500 strong. 



Hon. James I. Parker, chief of the division ui! 

 lands and railroads of the Interior Department, ha? 

 notified the executive committee that he will be present 

 at the Fourteenth National Irrigation Congress, to con- 

 vene at Boise, September 3 to 8, and take part in the 

 work of the congress. It has been suggested that in case 



ECONOMICAL METHOD OF IRRIGATION BY 

 HYDRAULIC RAMS. 



Excavating for Inigation Canal with Steam Shovel. 



Secretary Hitchcock is unable to attend the congress in 

 person, he will delegate Judge Parker to represent the 

 Interior Department. 



A pleasing departure from the usual plan of giv- 

 ing prizes has been adopted by the board of control at 

 Boise, in the exposition of irrigated products to be held 

 during the National Irrigation Congress, September 3 

 to 8. In place of awarding gold medals for individual 

 prizes, the board will give handsome solid. silver loving 

 cups, appropriately engraved, showing the purposes for 

 which they are given. There will be more than thirty 

 of these, in addition to the four grand sweepstake prizes, 

 which are large cups valued at $500 each. Many second 

 cash prizes will also be given. Sixteen States and nearly 

 300 individual competitors have asked for space at the 

 exposition. 



The Arid States Exposition of the Products of 

 Irrigation, which will be held at Boise during the ses- 

 sion of the Fourteenth National Irrigation Congress at 

 Boise, September 3 to 8^ will close with a grand irriga- 

 tion carnival. Floats representing every product of 

 irrigation will be in the parade, and each of the coun- 

 ties, cities and irrigation districts will be represented by 

 unique characters. Merchants of Idaho and manufac- 

 turers will join in the big parade. The occasion will be 

 used to distribute fruits and flowers to the visitors, and 

 the night given over to King Carnival and his followers, 

 who will take full possession of the city. 



For that class of irrigation problems which pre- 

 sents the conditions of a moderate fall of water avail- 

 able for power, and where it is required to raise a por- 

 tion of the water to a higher level, or even to a series 

 of higher levels, there is no more efficient or appro- 

 priate machine for pumping than the Eife hydraulic 

 ram. This statement is true for cases where the water- 

 fall is from 2 to 50 feet, and the rams will deliver, 

 approximately, one-third of the water used two and one- 

 half times as high as the fall, one-sixth, five times, one- 

 twelfth, ten times, etc. 



Fig. 1. Cross Section of Hydraulic Ram. 

 No. 120. Single Capacity 1500 gallons, Weight 3300 pounds. 



A Kife hydraulic ram will pump with good effi- 

 ciency against heads of twenty-five to thirty times the 

 amount of the fall. It is true the efficiency falls off as 

 the ratio between the power head and pumping head 

 increases. At low ratio of about three to one a Kife ram 

 will have an efficiency of over 90 per cent, whereas, at 

 a ratio of twelve to fifteen to one the efficiency will be 



Fig. 2. Hydraulic Ram and Connections U. S. 

 Coaling Station, Narragansett Bay, R. I. 



as high as 70 per cent; and with extreme ratios of 

 power head to force head the efficiency need not fall 

 below 60 per cent. 



The general impression of an hydraulic ram is that 

 of the small machine usually used for the supply of a 

 small country house where there is a flow of water avail- 

 able for power of, say, four to fifty gallons per minute 

 and the water used very wastefully, but there is another 

 side to the ram question, as the principle of the machine 

 is such that it permits the highest efficiencies, and when 

 rams are built on the line of good hydraulic engineering, 

 high efficiencies may be easily realized. 



There is also practically no limit to the size to 



