TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION G,. 501 
watercourses. In the November of each year each parish sends in to the direction- 
general an indent of the number of acres of each description of crop proposed to 
be watered in the following year. If the water is available thé direction-ceneral 
allots to each parish the number of modules necessary for this irrigation; but it 
may quite well happen that the parish “may demand more than can be supplied, 
and may have to substitute a crop like wheat, requiring little water, for rice, 
which requires a great deal. 
The Government executes and pays for all repairs on the main canals. It further 
executes, at the cost of the Irrigation Association, all repairs on the minor 
canals. ‘The association, then, has no engineers in its employ, but a large staff of 
irrigators. The irrigation module employed in Piedmont is supposed to deliver 
2-047 cubic feet per second. The Association West of the Sesia buys from the — 
Government what water it requires at a rate fixed at 800 liras per module, or 
15l. 12s. 7d. per cubic foot per second per annum. 
The association distributes the water by module to each district, and the 
district by module to each parish. Inside the parish each farmer pays, according 
to the area he waters, a sum to cover all the cost of the maintenance of the irriga- 
tion system, and his share of the sum which the association has to pay to the 
Government. This sum varies from year to year according as the working 
expenses of the year increase or diminish. 
I haye already mentioned the recently constructed Villoresi Canal in Lom- 
bardy. This canal belongs to a company, to whom the Government has given 
large concessions, This company sells its water wholesale to four districts, each 
having its own secondary canal, the cubic métre per second, or 35°31 cubic feet per 
second, being the unit employed. These districts, again, retail the water to groups 
of farmers termed comizios, whose lands are watered by the same distributary 
channels, their unit being the litre, or ‘035 cubie foot per second. Within the 
comizio the farmer pays according to the number of hours per week that he has had 
the full discharge of the module. 
I have thought it worth while to describe at some length the systems 
employed on these Italian canals, for the’ Italian farmers set a very high example, 
in the loyal way in which they submit to regulations which there must at times 
be a great temptation to break. A sluice surreptitiously opened during a dark night, 
and allowed to run for six hours, may quite possibly double the value of the crop 
which it waters. It is not an easy matter to distribute water fairly and justly 
between a number of farms at different levels, dependent on different watercourses, 
cultivating different crops. But in Piedmont this is done with such success that 
an appeal from the council of arbitration to the ordinary law courts is unheard 
of. It is thought apparently as discreditable to appropriate an unfair supply of 
water as to steal a neighbour’s horse, as -discreditable to tamper with the lock of 
the water module as with the lock of a neighbour's barn. 
Mr. Schuyler’s Views as to Government Control. 
Where such a high spirit of honour prevails I do not see why syndicates of 
farmers should not construct and maintain a good system of irrigation. Neverthe- 
less, I believe it is better that Government should take the initiative in laying out 
and constructing the canals and secondary channels at least. A recent American 
author, Mr, James Dix Schuyler, has put on record: ‘That storage reservoirs are 
a necessary and indispensable adjunct to irrigation development, as well as to the 
utilisation of power, requires no argument to prove. That they will become more 
and more necessary to our Western civilisation is equally sure and certain ; but the 
signs of the times seem to point to the inevitable necessity of Governmental control 
in their construction, ownership, and administration.’ 
This opinion should not be disregarded. Sir W. Willcocks has truly remarked : 
‘If private enterprise cannot succeed in irrigation works of magnitude in America, 
it will surely not succeed in any other country in this world.’ What its chances 
may be in South Africa I leave to my hearers to say. It is not a subject on which 
a stranger can form an opinion. 
