IV. S. H. BARRACLOUGH. 
the requirements of the situation. Professor Elwood Mead 
(Professor of the Institutions and Practice of Irrigation in 
the University of California, and Chief of Irrigation Inves- 
tigations in the United States Department of Agriculture) 
says' in this connection—" The most important industrial 
problem of the western part of the United States is the 
distribution and control of water used in irrigation.”’ 
The cheap labour of China, India, and other irrigating 
countries of the past is not available in America or here in 
Australia. Skilful engineering and agriculture must there- 
fore compensate for the high price of labour. Systematic 
instruction in this subject might presumably be given 
either in connection with a course in agriculture or in civil 
engineering, but preferably the latter. 
In the United States there are numerous Engineering 
Schools already giving more or less complete courses of 
training in irrigation engineering. The pioneer in this 
work was the State Agricultural College of Colorado. The 
latest is the University of California. The instruction in 
the last named institution extends over the usual under- 
graduate period of four years, the subjects taught during 
the first two years being identical with those of the regular 
civil engineering syllabus, while the special studies in con- 
nection with irrigation are introduced during the third and 
fourth years. . 
This particular course of instruction aims at training the 
engineer rather than the agriculturalist, but it is a point 
worthy of some emphasis that if we intend to embark on 
large schemes of water conservation and irrigation it will 
be equally necessary for us to specially train the farmer in 
the art of applying the water to the land. At present very 
little is done in either direction, but the moral to be drawn 
* Proce. So... Prom. Eno. Eds, Vols x: 
