PROGRESS AND POSITION OF IRRIGATION IN N.S.W. 389 
wholesale waste and extravagance, due chiefly to the haste with 
which settlers naturally avail themselves of their water rights ; 
but to counterbalance this waste, there is the great progress of 
agriculture and of horticulture. On the other hand in New South 
Wales the development of agriculture and horticulture has been 
greatly retarded, owing to the fact that no person has any right 
to use the river waters for irrigation. The free use of the river 
waters in Western America has led to remarkable progress in the 
cultivation of the land, but it has created objectionable monopolies, 
has caused much useless expenditure through ill-considered design 
and faulty construction of works, and has laid the foundation for 
endless disputes and litigation. Mr. Deakin has described how in 
California and Colorado, canals were constructed without engineers 
and even without surveys. Under such circumstances it is not 
surprising to find a more recent writer on the same subject, stating 
that he saw on a map of one of the counties in Wyoming a place 
where, to use his own words, “one hundred and fifty ditches, 
paralleled and duplicated one another in land which two ditches 
would have served thoroughly well.” A comparison of Mr. 
Deakin’s report on Irrigation in America with his recent admir- 
able work on Irrigated India is very instructive on this and 
kindred points. 
Notwithstanding the exceptionally favourable seasons which 
this Colony has lately experienced, and the absence of any legal 
right to irrigate from our rivers, the spread of irrigation since 
1884 has been much greater than is generally supposed. In that 
year the Royal Commission on the Conservation of Water was 
appointed under the presidency of the present Minister of Works, 
Mr. Lyne. Up till that time, with a very few exceptions, irriga- 
tion in New South Wales was practised only by Chinamen, who 
in this respect may, and very possibly do, claim to have been the 
pioneers of civilisation. Now there are pumping appliances for 
irrigation purposes to be found on every important river, and on 
a number of creeks and lagoons west of the Dividing Range; and 
not only so, but even in the coast district, irrigation, particularly 
