IKRlCrATION BY ARTESIAN WELLS. 545 



4i) and 2. But a far greater contrast is afforded by the water of the Hum- 

 boldt artesian well, which contains about 1,250 times more dissolved mineral 

 matter than Lake Superior, while the ratio of their salinity is 22,572 to 1. 

 It should be remarked, however, that these comparisons are made with 

 one of the purest lakes of the world. Few analyses of the natural waters 

 of lakes and streams show so little dissolved mineral and organic matter. 

 Reindeer Lake, lying in the great Archean area of central Canada, north 

 of Lake Winnipeg, is one of these, for it has only about three-fifths as 

 nuich dissolved matter as Lake Superior; and an equally small amount, or 

 even slightly less, is found in the waters of Bala Lake, in Wales, and Loch 

 Katrine, in Scotland.^ 



USE OF ARTESIAN WATER FOR IRRIGATIOIST. 



Within the agricultural eastern half of both North and South Dakota, 

 occasional years, and sometimes two or thi-ee years in succession, have much 

 less rainfall than the average. These years of drought and consequent 

 complete or partial failure of crops have been exceedingly discouraging to 

 the people of these States, checking the immigration which poured in rapidly 

 during a series of comparatively wet years, with magnificent crops, from 

 1880 to 1885. The great fertility of the soil, however, when supplied with 

 sufficient moisture, causes the questions to be asked: Can artificial irriga- 

 tion be provided during seasons of drought on this area! and, Can artesian 

 wells be profitably used for this purpose? 



These questions are not of so great impoi-tance for the Red River 

 Valley, where no drought has severely affected the crops during the fifteen 

 or twenty years since the earliest settlement and development of farming, 

 as for the closely adjacent country on the west, from the vicinity of Devils 

 Lake southward along the Sheyenne and James rivers, where many farmers 

 sowing 50 to 200 acres or more in wheat harvested little or nothing dur- 

 ing the very dry years of 1887 to 1889. But within the Red River Valley 

 portions of the summers of these and other years have been so diy that 

 artificial in-igation would have benefited the grain fields. In a few instances 



' Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey of Canada, Report of Progress for 1880-81-82, pp. 6, 7 H. 

 MON XXV 35 



