DISCUSSION. CXCIX. 
WATER CONSERVATION and IRRIGATION— 
DISCUSSION. 
Mr. McCo.ul, M.H.R., Victoria, in addressing the Confer- 
ence, said, he came over from Melbourne as a learner and 
not as a teacher, and felt some difficulty in addressing such 
an audience that night. He also desired to remind them 
that he was not a scientific man nor an expert, but for the 
last seventeen years he had represented the greater part 
of Victoria which was under irrigation, and had been 
associated with it from its earliest inception. He had 
been disappointed with the numerous mistakes which had 
been made and rejoiced over the successes which were not 
to be despised. 
Arid countries, such as the north of Africa, the south of 
Europe, Palestine, and Egypt had prospered in past years 
because they used the water as it flowed from the hills to 
the fullest extent, and fell as they neglected the question 
of irrigation. He hoped the authorities would heed the 
lessons both of the past and present. He thought that in 
Australia there could not be an ideal system of irrigation 
owing to the absence of big mountain ranges, but the 
amount of water that was allowed to run to waste was 
most culpable. Around the coast there was a rainfall of 
from twenty to thirty inches, and next to nothing in the 
interior. In Victoria they had a mountain range running 
for a great part of the lengthofit. From that range there 
flowed down nine rivers. These rivers were allowed to 
flow to the sea to the extent of some 250,000 millions of 
cubic feet per annum, and the water which went to waste 
would cover four million acres twelve inches deep, was it 
not culpable on the part of the authorities to let such 
