152 JOUENAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
upper reaches of the Thames had been considered by the Board of Works 
and also by local authorities. This would be all very well if the reser- 
voirs were filled up only in times of flood when there was a very great 
overflow; but if the river is to be depleted when the water is low great 
difficulty might arise. In conclusion he should like to say that this was 
the kind of paper they were always pleased to listen to. 
Mr. E. Inwabds said he had lived for some years in dry countries, 
where the question of irrigation is always to the fore, and where no 
one disputed the advantages of saving the water. The question was 
rather one of how much money may be spent upon it. The rent of 
land in some parts of Spain, for instance, averaged only about the 
equivalent of 5s. an acre. This, of course, was for very dry, he might 
almost say desert land. But, on the other hand, where the land was 
well watered it was worth from £S to €4 an acre per annum. In that 
country lawsuits were always arising about the smallest water supply, 
which was measured by the quantity which would flow through a 
cane of a certain size. There was a kind of water-mayor in every 
village, whose business it was to settle these frequent disputes. Then 
there was the question of cost. If the difference in the rent of 
watered land, as compared with dry, amounted to as much as £2. 10s. 
an acre, could water be supplied for anything like that amount ? On the 
sides of mountains and places where gullies were frequent it was prac- 
ticable by building a dam across the valley and impounding the water. 
It was done in some parts of the United States on such a scale, with the 
result that the lower waters were depleted because the high lands had 
taken almost the whole supply. In some parts a simple contrivance, 
worked by the wind, might perhaps be used, consisting of a coil of rope 
or hemp carried over a pulley. This driven at a great speed by the wind 
raised up the water entangled in the threads and gave it up by pressure 
at a higher level. It is a good substitute for expensive machinery, where 
there is water not far from the surface. A wind pump in the corner of a 
field would yield large quantities of water in that way. These wind 
pumps can be made to work in the lightest wind, and working day and 
night will raise a very large quantity of water. 
Mr. E. H. Curtis said he had had no practical experience of the 
storage of rain from the horticultural or the commercial side of the ques- 
tion, but without doubt a great deal of water was allowed to run to waste, 
so far as its utilisation for the public good was concerned, owing to its not 
being intercepted and retained for use at points where it was needed, and 
at times when it was superabundant. Of course, in a certain sense 
the water is not " wasted " either when it is thus intercepted or when 
it is not— in both cases alike it eventually fulfils its part in the 
economy of Nature. But in countries where the rainfall is unequally 
distributed over the year — at certain seasons falling copiously and 
causing the rivers to run in dangerous floods, while at other times 
the same rivers become little more than a series of pools — the difference 
to the community caused by storing the surplus of the wet season for 
use during the scarcity of the dry is very often the difference be- 
tween a vigorous prosperity and an abject poverty. To give an idea 
of what this surplus sometimes amounts to in our own country, he 
