— 69 — 
After many years’ experience in India and Egypt, we are convinced 
that the construction of drains and escapes should precede, and not 
follow the canals. It seems fatuous for engineers to be always over- 
saturating and half-ruining tens of thousands of acres of low-lying 
lands, during the improvement of hundreds of thousands of acres of 
high -lying lands, when it would be perfectly easy, with a little fore- 
sight, to secure all the advantages without piling up disadvantages. 
The drains have generally one-third the capacity of the canals. Dry 
crops require 1 cubic metre per second per 3500 acres ; and rice requires 
the same per 2000 acres. The drains in dry-cropped lands provide for 
1 cubic metre per second per 10,000 acres, and in rice lands 1 cubic 
metre per second per 6000 acres. 
While basin irrigation is followed by the winter crops of wheat, 
beans, clover, barley, flax, lentils, vetches and onions, perennial irriga- 
tion allows of all the above winter crops and in addition the summer 
crops of cotton, sugar-cane, oilseeds, gardens and orchards. It will 
readily be understood that all this double cropping necessitates a very 
free use of manures. 
It would be a healthy innovation indeed, if the provision of suitable 
manures were to be considered as an essential part of a project for 
providing perennial irrigation. The day is not far distant, I believe, 
when governments which provide irrigation works will also provide 
manures, and sell the water and the manures together, one being as 
essential as the other ; I know well, from observation, that a well- 
manured field needs only half the water that a poorly manured field 
does ; and in years of drought and scarcity manures almost take the place 
of irrigation. Why should there not be a manure-rate as well as a 
water-rate ? Here in Egypt, the numerous ruins of old-world cities 
have hitherto provided manure for a great part of the perenially ir- 
rigated lands ; but these are being fast worked out, and other sources 
must be sought for. Farm -yard manure will never suffice for the 
intense cultivation in this country. In connection with this subject, 
I can recommend the study of a remarkably able paper on “ Nile Culti- 
vation and Nitrates, ” read by Mr. J. B. Fuller, C.I.E., before the 
Agricultural Society of England, and embodied in the 3rd Series, 
Yol. VII., Part 4, 1896. Egypt possesses, in the vicinity of Luxor, 
natural beds of nitrates of unlimited extent, which come down to the 
river’s edge. These nitrate beds have been used from time immemo- 
rial, but were brought to the notice of the general public by Mr. Floyer. 
