TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL FRUIT-GROWERS' CONVENTION. 121 



and there has been nothing equal to it since; that rain is commonly 

 known in history as The Flood. Agnostics think that they have scored 

 a point when they state that the properties of light must have been just 

 the same before the flood as since, and claim that the bow must have 

 existed from the beginning; but they overlook the fact that the whole 

 agricultural business was run on an irrigation plan and that there was 

 no rain previous to the flood. 



Water for irrigation purposes is derived from three sources in 

 California: 



1. Mountain and other streams. 



2. Wells — flowing or pumped. 



3. Reservoirs. 



Of the above named sources, it would seem that the reservoir is the 

 most important, for every available foot of land can be made a reservoir. 

 In the technical sense a reservoir is "a basin, either natural or artificial, 

 for collecting and retaining water or other liquids. " 



There are two essentials to make a reservoir a success : First, there 

 must be means for collecting the water; and second, means for retain- 

 ing it until it is needed. When we speak of soils and mountains as 

 reservoirs, the word is not used in the technical sense, for I believe that 

 the great volume of water that continues to flow from our mountains 

 is held in the interstices of the soil and rocks. 



My own investigation shows that our different soils hold from 17 to 

 26 per cent of water, although some authorities make a much larger 

 percentage. 



Different kinds of soils vary in regard to their porosity, and the same 

 soils vary to a very great degree in regard to their power of absorbing 

 water, depending upon the amount of moisture already contained in 

 them. For example, on the red mesa land at South Pasadena, where 

 the soil was practically dry, containing a little over one per cent of water 

 when the water was turned on, it only absorbed one twentieth of the 

 amount of water in a given time that was absorbed by soil of the same 

 kind which contained at the beginning of the experiment about eight 

 per cent of moisture. This may be an extreme case, but it is remark- 

 able how much water will run off from the soil when it is dry. We see 

 the same effect if we dip a dry feather in water; when we pull it out it 

 "comes out dry. But if we moisten it, and then dip it in water, it comes 

 out saturated. It seems necessary, then, in order to have our land 

 absorb the maximum amount of water in the minimum amount of 

 time, that the soil should retain a goodly percentage of moisture. Or, 

 in other words, if we wish to fill our mountains and soils with water 

 and preserve the greatest amount of rainfall, they should be kept moist. 



Having shown that it is necessary to have some moisture in the soil 

 in order to have it absorb the rainfall readily, and thus make our 



