TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G. 491 
Later on I shall show you how good irrigation should always be accompanied by 
drainage. 
In lands where there is abundant rainfall, and where it falls at the right 
season of the year for the crop which it is intended to raise, there is evidently no 
need of irrigation. But it often happens that the soil and the climate are adapted 
for the cultivation of a more valuable crop than that which is actually raised, 
because the rain does not fall just when it is wanted, and there we must take to 
artificial measures. 
In other lands there is so little rain that it is practically valueless for agrieul- 
ture, and there are but two alternatives—irrization or desert. It is in countries 
like these that irrigation has its highest triumph; nor are such lands always to be 
pitied or despised. The rainfall in Cairo is on an average 1:4 inch per annum, 
yet lands purely agricultural are sold in the neighbourhood as high as 150/. an 
acre. 
This denotes a fertility perhaps unequalled in the case of any cultivation de- 
pending on rain alone, and this in spite of the fact that the Egyptian cultivator is 
in many respects very backward. ‘The explanation is not far to seek. All rivers 
in flood carry along much more than water. Some carry alluvial matter. Some 
carry fine sand. Generally the deposit is a mixture of the two. I have never 
heard of any river that approached the Nile in the fertilising nature of the matter 
borne on its annual floods ; with the result that the plains of Egypt have gone on 
through all ages, with the very minimum of help from foreign manures, yielding 
magnificent crops and never losing their fertility. Other rivers bring down little 
but barren sand, and any means of keeping it off the fields should be employed. 
Primitive Means of Irrigation. , 
The earliest and simplest form of irrigation is effected by raising water from a 
Jake, river, or well, and pouring it over the land. The water may be raised by 
any mechanical power, from the brawny arms of the peasant to the newest pattern 
of pump. The earliest Egyptian sculptures show water being raised by a 
bucket attached to one end of a long pole, turning on an axis with a heavy counter- 
poise at the other end. In Egypt this is termed a shadoof, and to this day, all 
along the Nile banks, from morning to night, brown-skinned peasants may be seen 
watering their fields in precisely this way. Tier above tier they ply their work 
so as to raise water 15 or 16 feet on to their land. By this simple contrivance it 
is not possible to keep more than about 4 acres watered by one shadoof, so you 
may imagine what an army are required to irrigate a large surface. Another method, 
largely used by the natives of Northern India, is the shallow bucket suspended 
between two strings, held by men who thus bale up the water. A step higher is the 
water-wheel, with buckets or pots on an endless chain around it, worked by one or a 
pair of bullocks. This is a very ordinary method of raising the water throughout 
the Kast, where the water-wheel is of the rudest wooden construction and the pots 
are of rough earthenware. Yet another method of water-raising is very common 
in India from wells where the spring level may be as deep as 100 feet or more. A 
large leathern bag is let down the well by a rope passing over a pulley and raised by 
a pair of bullocks, which haul the bag up as they run down a slope the depth of 
the well. An industrious farmer with a good well and three pairs of good bul- 
locks can keep as much as 12 acres irrigated in Northern India, although the 
ayerage is much less there. The average cost of a masonry well in India varies 
from 20/. to 40/., according to the depth required. But it is obvious that in many 
places the geological features of the country are such that well-sinking is im- 
practicable. The most favourable conditions are found in the broad alluvial plains 
of a deltaic river, the subsoil of which may be counted on as containing a constant 
supply of water. 
Pumps and Windmills. 
All these are the primitive water-raising contrivances of the East. Egypt 
has of late been more in touch with Western civilisation, and since its cotton 
