182 Pumping for Irrigation. 
interference with the motion of the arms. The current of water 
in the channel underneath forces the buckets down stream, the 
latter delivering in the opposite direction at the top. By using 
a double set of boxes, one at each end of each bucket, the water 
may be delivered on both sides simultaneously. A little experi- 
menting will indicate the proper size of the boxes, which de- 
pends upon the velocity and volume of water in the channel as 
well as the amount to be delivered. 
At the Fancher Creek Nursery, in Fresno County, a wheel 
is used eighteen feet in diameter, and carries sixteen buckets, 
which empty into a trough sixteen feet above the ditch. The 
wheel lifts about one cubic foot in two seconds. 
PUMPING FOR IRRIGATION. 
The year 1898 will be ever memorable for the general 
awakening of Californians not only to the desirability of an 
irrigation supply even in regions which had hitherto depended 
upon rainfall, but to the fact that pumping is feasible and profit- 
able. Thousands of growers began to realize that their orchard 
soil is merely the cover of an apparently inexhaustible reservoir. 
Others satisfied themselves that supplies from adjacent streams 
can be very cheaply thrown to elevations from which the water 
would flow over their lands. The use of the pump is only just 
beginning in California, though we have had for years as good 
and capacious pumping machinery in use as the world can show. 
The capacity of pumps, their ease and cheapness of operation 
in this land of oil wells, and of ponderous waterfalls whose power 
can be transformed into electric energy, warrant the conclusion 
that in many places water can be lifted from below more 
cheaply than it can be brought long distances by ditch; and 
that the supply is more constant and subject to the users’ com- 
mand and convenience. In all parts of the State well-boring 
and digging and pump construction is proceeding at a rate 
beyond any parallel in the history of California. Pumping 
plants of all capacities, from the greatest of the gasoline class, 
lifting five thousand gallons per minute from a depth of twenty- 
five feet, down to the plant with a throw of three hundred gal- 
lons per minute, all styles of motors and pumps are being con- 
stantly multiplied. These plants are being placed upon wells in 
the orchard or in the vicinity, or upon adjacent streams, or are 
being mounted upon barges so as to do custom pumping for 
many orchards. Many new devigns by California inventors 
are coming into use. It would require a volume to contain 
any adequate account of California's recent progress in these 
lines. Economic pumping is governed by so many consid- 
erations that no general statement would be conclusive in any 
