WET LANDS OF SOUTHERN LOUISIANA. 37 



mounted on a concrete foundation supported on piling driven in unusually hard 

 subsoil. This plant was found of ample capacity to drain this area of 5,000 

 acres, and an additional area of 2,000 acres was placed tributary to the plant. 

 The building inclosing this machinery is a frame of structural steel, covered 

 with heavy corrugated iron. 



Condition of Land for Cultivation. 



Owing to the solid nature of the subsoil, cultivation was started on this area 

 a few weeks after the pumping plant had removed the water. By April, 1913, 

 a year after the pumps were started, about 500 acres were plowed. A gang 

 of moldboard plows, drawn by a heavy apron-wheel tractor, was used. After 

 the tough sod had been pulverized with a tractor-drawn disk harrow the land 

 was cultivated successfully with ordinary farm animals and machinery. On 

 the deeper muck near the south end of the area, plowing was done with a large 

 disk plow drawn by tractor. In 1914 a little more than 600 acres were culti- 

 vated, in 1915 about 1,000 acres, and in 1916 about 1,500 acres. Most of this 

 cultivated land was planted in rice, and the water for irrigating it taken from 

 the interior reservoir canals. During the months when water was used for 

 rice irrigation (June to August, inclusive) the amount of water that the large 

 drainage pumping plant took out of the interior canals was very small. When 

 the water was drained off the rice field, preparatory to cutting, a considerable 

 volume of water had to be pumped. 



RESULTS OF INVESTIGATIONS OF RECLAIMED TRACTS. 



Table I gives a summary of all the details of reclamation and the prominent 

 natural features on the areas already described, with corresponding data on 

 a number of other districts. No detailed descriptions of these latter districts 

 will be given, as conditions on them are in general similar to those on the 

 districts already described. In explanation of this table the following notes 

 are given: 



