OBSERVATIOXS OX IRRIGATION WORKS IN INDIA. 



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fact that they died of starvation, because they could not carry the 

 food to the people. There was any amount of food around them, 

 but it could not be carried there. The same thing applies to-day, 

 and in this country we are in precisely the same condition. We 

 could not live on our own food supply, we have to import it, and if 

 from any cause the means of communication were interrupted, we 

 should starve as the people of Orissa starved. 



Mr. Odling has referred to the areas irrigated. I wish to 

 show 3'ou, briefly, how great an advance has been made. The old 

 works, to which I referred a little while ago, irrigated, in 1855 or 

 1856, about four million acres only. Shortly after that. Lord Mayo 

 introduced a system by which immense prominence was given to 

 irrigation works. In the next four years that figure of four million 

 acres had risen to ten millions, and then, in a few years, to twenty 

 million acres. Lord Curzon in the Eeport of the Commission lately 

 sitting proposes to expend another £30,000,000 (29 ^ millions is the 

 figure given by Mr. Odling as the cost up to March, 1902) in 

 increasing the irrigation works of India. I am glad to see that those 

 works are not to be gauged entirely by their financial results, but 

 they are to be constructed if they are likely to produce results 

 beneficial to the peoi3le. 



There is another point upon which I think the paper does not give 

 you sufficient clearness of ideas as to the size and volume of these 

 works that are referred to. It is always very difficult to speak on 

 technical subjects in a way that those not acquainted with them can 

 follow. Mr. Odling speaks of the discharge of a canal being 3,000 

 cubic feet per second. Xot many here, perhaps, know what that 

 means. I propose to compare it with this little river here, the 

 Thames. Xow the Thames, at Windsor, or about there, has an 

 ordinary discharge of about 1,000 cubic feet a second. 



Mr. Odling, in mentioning these canals, speaks of them as carrying 

 3,000 cubic feet. I am glad to say I succeeded at one time, when 

 water was badly wanted, in securing 4,000 feet. However, that is 

 three times the size of the Thames. The Ganges carries about 

 seven times the amoimt of the Thames at Windsor. The Chenab 

 canal that Mr. Odling mentions carries no less than 10,800 cubic 

 feet a second. 



The Thames, at flood, has been gauged to discharge from 11,000 

 to 12,000 feet a second; so it will carry, when doing its worst, about 



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