20 VREDENBURG : RECENT ARTESIAN EXPERIMENTS IN INDIA. 



There are many places topographically so situated that wells 

 provide the only available means of irrigation. 



Irrigation from canals. r> . i_ r mi ...... r t -<- • i 



But wherever feasible, irrigation from artificial 

 canals deriving their supply from the perennial flow of natural 

 river channels, or from artificial reservoirs will enhance the value 

 of the land considerably more than irrigation from wells can do. 

 This method, however, does not come under the scope of private 

 enterprise, but can only be accomplished as an outcome of well- 

 matured schemes of such vast proportions as can only be dealt 

 with by Government. In this line India has nothing to learn from 

 other countries, and her canals and her "tanks" have long com- 

 manded the admiration of the engineering world, ranking as models 

 to be imitated wherever similar works are undertaken. It is, no 

 doubt, to the extension of this system of irrigation from canals and 

 to its thoroughly systematic application that we must look forward 

 to the development of the agricultural possibilities of the country 

 to their utmost degree of efficiency, and for the complete disappear- 

 ance of those dire calamities which must keep recurring at fated 

 intervals, so long as India is not adequately provided for against the 

 difficulties caused by occasional periods of deficient rainfall. If 

 artesian reservoirs were of any great utility in averting these dis- 

 asters, it would reem strange indeed that their resources should have 

 been neglected by a body of men of such ability as are found in the 

 Irrigation branch of the Public Works Department. The expla- 

 nation of that apparent neglect is, that such a resource does not 

 really exist. Much has been done already in the way of reservoir 

 and canal construction in districts liable to occasional drought. 

 There remains certainly plenty to be done, for these works have 

 not been developed to the same extent as in regions of permanently 

 deficient rainfall where they are much more remunerative owing to 

 their being constantly needed. The canals that are built in districts 

 where the rainfall is amply sufficient in all but years of minimum 

 rainfall do not seem at first sight to be remunerative, since they are 



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