TWENTY-FOURTH ANNUAL FRUIT-GROWERS 5 CONVENTION. 129 



it takes from two to four times as long, according to the nature of the 

 soil, to irrigate by it. We think this objection would in practice amount 

 to little or nothing, if a community should adopt the system. If the 

 existence of an orchard depends upon it, or the successful maturing of a 

 crop, we apprehend that arrangements could be made for giving the 

 individual rancher his water in from two to four times the length of 

 run, cutting him down in quantity correspondingly. 



It has been ascertained that soils differ in regard to their porosity 

 and, consequently, in their absorbing power. The extremes seem to be, 

 in different soils, that a single hole will soak away from 2 to 15 gallons 

 of water per hour, this largely depending upon the amount of moisture 

 that there is in a soil — a perfectly dry soil requiring much more time 

 than the soil containing six to eight per cent of moisture. This must 



Inter-Irrigation. 



be determined by each rancher for himself. It is done by placing- a 

 barrel containing a known quantity of water, on the ground at the side 

 of the hole, with the faucet over it; allowing the hole to be filled with 

 water from the faucet to the desired height, regulating the flow so that 

 the water will stand at this height in the hole. Assume that you desire 

 to soak away 389 gallons in this hole (the equivalent of one miner's 

 inch continuous flow to ten acres where there are one hundred trees per 

 acre), and that it took 38.9 hours to soak away the 389 gallons; this 

 would be at the rate of ten gallons per hour. One would then know 

 that such irrigation must continue by this system for 38.9 hours in 

 order to get what would be equivalent to one miner's inch continuous 

 flow to ten acres. 



And the second objection is, the trouble of cultivation where there are 

 troughs and holes through an orchard. But if the troughs are set deep 

 9— BH 



