316 ‘WATER STORAGE AND CANALIZATION. 
and irrigation, and together with its numerous branches, irrigates 
an immense area of country, thus affording millions the means of 
livelihood and support. 
Again, in the Malay Archipelago irrigation is carried out to 
such perfection as to excite the astonishment of the distinguished 
naturalist Mr. Wallace, who thus describes it :—“It was here 
that I first obtained an adequate idea of one of the most wonderful 
stems of cultivation in the world, equalling all that is related of 
Chinese industry, and, as far as I know, surpassing in the labour 
bestowed on it any tract of equal extent in the most civilized 
countries of Europe. I rode through this strange garden utterly 
amazed, and hardly able to realize the fact that in this remote and 
little known island, Lombock, from which all Europeans (except 
a few traders at the port) are jealously excluded, many hundreds 
irrigation purposes. The “Vishnood” declares that “no satis- 
faction is felt without water in the three worlds, Heaven, Hell, 
and Earth ; therefore a wise and learned man should cause reset 
an 
of water obtains perpetual felicity without doubt”; and as 
Bhewish-Yotara-poonan exclaims: “O thou son of Koonti, get 
large supplies of water made at the sacrifice of your whole 
property, for the man at whose reservoir the cow slakes her thirst 
becomes the preserver of his family.” 
Immense tanks or reservoirs and irrigating canals appear t0 eit 
been constructed in India many centuries anterior to the advent o 
, and some of them are probably equally as ancient as 
tian canals. The Cummin tank in Madras has embank- 
ment 102 feet high, and of considerable length. The Naeger 
Sulikerrai has an embankment 84 feet high and 603 feet_wide 6 
base, which encloses an area of about 40 square miles. awd 
the Mincheri tank forms a beautiful lake, of over 20 miles 
circumference. The Kalavara tank is about 46 miles in crew?” 
ference, and is formed by an embankment 12 miles long ghee 
the Kalaoga River. The Kalucarri tank forms a lake 60 me 
circumference by an embankment 15 miles long, and 300 feet aL 
at base. Many of these immense embankments consist only oa 
trodden clay resting on the surface of the ground, and are skill, 
structed without the application of any particular engineering # 
no puddle walls having been used to render them more water-tigh 
