M.—AGRICULTURE, 247 
developments in irrigation. This ancient art originated in Mesopotamia 
and Egypt, and then almost died out. It was then taken up by the 
Americans and the British, and is now almost an Anglo-American science. 
The engineer provides the water and the drainage, the agriculturist devises 
the appropriate system of husbandry, finds the most suitable varieties 
and the ways of growing them, and shows how to obtain the maximum 
value for the water used. The soil expert distinguishes those areas that 
can advantageously be watered from those that should not, and discovers 
also the effect which the water will subsequently have on the soil, and 
the interactions likely to occur between the soil and the soluble salts 
almost invariably present. The plant pathologist deals with the plant 
diseases that inevitably occur, and the medical authorities must keep 
a close watch for malaria. It seems a formidable technical staff, but 
constant watchfulness is imperative ; success in the first ten or fifteen 
years is easily enough attained, but serious troubles sooner or later dog 
the steps of those who change a natural desert into an artificial garden. 
Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. You may drive out Nature 
with a pitchfork, but she always comes back again. The Spirit of the 
Waste is not too easily conquered. 
The greatest triumphs of irrigation in our time have been in India, 
There British engineers have set up the greatest dams, the greatest canals, 
the greatest schemes the world can show. The cultivable area of India 
has been enormously increased, and land provided for millions of peasants 
who would otherwise have had none. Since the British introduced the 
great modern schemes famine has been banished from India—not only 
famine but even the memory of famine and of the self-sacrificing labours 
of those who finally overcame it. These Indian irrigation schemes are 
an unmixed blessing; they are largely used for local food production, 
and they raise the standard of life for the peasants without lowering the 
standard of life of anyone else by flooding the world market with cheap 
products. Irrigation schemes worked by white men are so costly that 
only valuable products can be raised. The Murray River basin in 
_ Australia, the largest white man’s scheme in the Empire, produces 
dairy produce, oranges, peaches, raisins and other fruits for the world 
market, and rice, which largely goes to the East. The main purpose in 
Western Canada is fruit and dairy produce, in the White River and other 
settlements in South Africa, oranges. In hotter regions the schemes are 
worked by natives under British supervision, but usually for costly crops ; 
in the Gezira cotton is the purpose. In all cases irrigation has greatly 
increased the output from the land and greatly increased the supplies for 
_ the world market. If time permitted, it would be possible to go through 
the whole list of products of the earth and show how modern science has 
increased output far beyond human needs, with a resulting fall in demand 
and lowered prices. One could dilate on the achievements of the Dutch 
in Java in producing their new sugar cane, which quadrupled the output 
and so lowered the price of sugar that the West Indies are in terrible 
distress, the sugar-beet industry of this country is threatened, and all 
Europe would be in trouble but that they artificially keep out the new 
sugar. Or again, one could speak of the achievements in rubber growing, 
of the change over from wild rubber to plantation rubber, of the extra- 
