CCcIlI. WATER CONSERVATION AND IRRIGATION. 
system, he thought, was fairly perfect. In the cities and 
towns the charges for the water was by so much in the & 
on the municipal value to a certain amount and after that 
by meter, at the rate of 1/- per thousand gallons. 
The Victorian irrigation channels were on thesemi-surface 
principle, the banks being formed from trenches so that 
the water was above the surface of the land to be irrigated 
and allowed of a gravitation supply. Some years ago it 
was found that the Trusts could not meet the interest, so 
Parliament took the matter in hand and wiped off a portion 
of the liability, as I have told you previously. The liability 
for the Trust works ran from 12/- to 30/- per acre, and 
under the new order of things since the writing off, the 
Trusts have to meet their engagements and the rates struck 
amounted from 1/- to 4/- in the & on the municipal assess- 
ment, with a charge of from 6d. to 1/- per inch per acre 
for water supplied. They heard a good deal of the non- 
success of Trusts in Victoria, but the people were not so 
much to blame, the reason being the want of the necessary 
conservation of water and inability to regulate the flow of 
the streams, so as to retain the winter supplies for use in 
the dry seasons. After the boom there came a very bad 
time in Victoria. Money was scarce and a new Govern- 
ment came in not in touch with irrigation; the Trusts for 
these reasons were not the success they ought to have been, 
Irrigation was new, and a very great many mistakes were 
made; sometimes in the use of too much water, and some- 
times through want of knowledge of the soil. The engineers 
as well as the people have all to learn and know irrigation 
was not the success so far in Victoria it was anticipated, 
but it would be yet. 
It was a great pity that in Victoria, and also in New 
South Wales, there was not a continuity of policy in large 
questions. In these great and important matters one of 
