398 H, G. McKINNEY. 
was protected against famine when there was a sufficient area of 
irrigated land to supply food for the population within its bounds. 
Notwithstanding the rapid increase in the population of India, 
famines are becoming less frequent and less severe. This is due 
almost entirely to the extension of irrigation and of railway con- 
struction. The same system is wanted here, not in our case for 
the protection of human life, but chiefly for the protection of live 
stock. Ifthe western districts were dotted over with irrigation 
farms, wherever water is available, and pastoralists would adopt 
the principle of having at least one acre of irrigation to every five 
hundred acres of land in its natural state, the position of the 
country in time of drought would be immensely improved. In 
land which in its natural condition cannot be depended on to feed 
more than one sheep to every ten acres, the importance of patches 
of lucerne, every acre of which will supply feed for twenty sheep 
isat once apparent. This is the class of irrigation which is likely 
to prevail throughout a large part of the colony; but on some of 
our rivers, and particularly on the Murrumbidgee, Murray, and 
Macquarie, there is scope for projects which in point of magnitude 
will take rank with the more important irrigation systems of the 
Western States of America. 
I was glad to find that there is a paper by an expert in agri- 
cultural chemistry to follow this one, the subject being Irrigation 
from Artesian Wells. The same branch of the irrigation question 
was dealt with last year in a valuable paper read before this Society 
by Mr. Mingaye, the Chemical Analyst attached to the Depart- 
ment of Mines. While it would be out of place for me to attempt 
to dealin any way with questions which belong to experts in 
chemistry, it is only right that I should refer to the saline efflor- 
escence found in many places in India, and attributed by some to 
irrigation. Having had the advantage of living for years in 
districts largely affected by the efflorescence, which is known in 
Upper India by the various names, ‘“reh,” ‘usur,” “shor,” and 
‘‘kullur,” and having been in immediate charge of irrigation works 
in these districts, I am in a position to speak from actual know- 
