AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST, 
FOR THE 
Farm, Garden, and. Honseliold.. 
“ AGRICULTURE IS THE MOST HEALTHFUL, MOST USEFUL, AND MOST NOBLE EMPLOYMENT OF MAN.«-W*«nix<iT<m, 1 
ORANGE JUDD, A.M., ) 
EDITOR AND PROPRIETOR. )- 
Office, 41 Park Row, (Times Buildings.) ) 
ESTABLISHED IN 1842, 
Published both in English and German. 
( $1.00 PER ANNUM, IN ADVANCE, 
•j SINGLE NUMBER, 10 CENTS. 
' For Contents, Terms, etc., see page 234 . 
VOLUME XXI—No. 7. 
NEW-YORK, JULY, 1862. 
NEW SERIES—No. 186. 
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1SG2, by 
Orange Judd, in the Clerk's Ofticc of the District Court of 
the United States for the Southern District of Ncw-York. 
E3?~ Other Journals are invited to copy desirable articles 
freely, if each article be credited to Americani Agriculturist. 
“Ye swains, invoke the powers who rule the sky, 
For a moist Summer and a Winter dry ; 
For Winter drought rewards the peasant’s pain, 
And broods indulgent on the buried grain. 
Hence Mysia boasts her harvests, and the tops 
Of Gargarus admire their happy crops. 
Then when the suns too fiercely play, 
And shriveled herbs on withering stems decay, 
The wary plowman, on the mountain’s brow, 
Undams his watery stores ; huge torrents flow, 
And rattling down the rocks, large moisture yield, 
Tempering the thirsty fever of the field.”— Virgil. 
We are again amid the fervid heats of July, 
the hottest and oftentimes the dryest month of 
the year. One now only needs to look over the 
parched fields, especially in a dry season, to un¬ 
derstand the need of irrigation. Even in sea¬ 
sons of average moisture we could use to ad¬ 
vantage many times the quantity of water that 
falls from the clouds. It would always make 
the hay crop a certainty, and often quadruple the 
yield of grass in the irrigated fields. It was not 
strange that the Romans living under the bright 
skies of Italy, early found the advantage of 
damming their mountain streams, and turning 
them at pleasure upon the meadows below. It 
would seem from the account of Virgil, that 
whole districts were famous for the crops pro¬ 
cured mainly by this method. Irrigation must 
have been an art well understood long before 
the Christian era. Is it not strange that in a 
climate quite as much subject to drouth as that 
of Italy, irrigation should he almost unknown 
among us ? With a climate that demands it, 
and with unrivaled facilities for its practice, in 
most of the northern States, not one farmer in 
a thousand has availed himself of the treasures 
of water within his reach. Nothing could bet¬ 
ter show the neglect of agriculture among us as 
an art than this fact. Few people are more in¬ 
genious than ours, or more quick to take advan¬ 
tage of the facilities which Nature offers to save 
labor and to create wealth. We abound in all 
useful inventions and labor-saving machines. 
We dam streams to turn innumerable wheels for 
manufacturing purposes ; to make fish ponds, 
and adorn our ornamental grounds; to make 
model lakes and raise our annual crop of ice, 
for the delight of Europe and the Indies. But 
how rarely is a stream turned from its course to 
fertilize the land and increase our harvests. 
Few have any conception of the value of wa¬ 
ter as a fertilizer. Many turn the streams made 
by rains in the highways into the adjacent fields, 
but they attribute all the increased luxuriance 
of the grass to the matter deposited. No doubt 
street refuse, such as the rain washes into the 
meadow, is an excellent fertilizer, but the rain 
itself contributes to the result. Far beyond the 
line of deposit, you see the effects of the water. 
Just how the water operates to fertilize the 
soil we may not be able to state. Of the fact 
there can be no doubt. We see the power of 
water to make crops in every drouth that comes. 
There are fields of light gravelly soil, whose 
crops of grass are nearly doubled in wet seasons. 
It is pretty safe to infer that water makes the 
difference. Water is a powerful solvent, and 
helps the decomposition, not only of vegetable 
fiber in the soil, but of its mineral constituents. 
You can not wash a stone so clean that water 
will not act upon its surface, and after a few 
hours wash away something more from it. It is 
probable that the water is all the while prepar¬ 
ing plant food from the soil where it is present, 
and of course the more of it we pass through 
the soil, the more nourishment the roots of 
plants are enabled to take up. 
We have recently examined two small valleys, 
flowed for skating during the winter, and drawn 
off in early Spring. In botli you can detect the 
water line in winter by the greater luxuriance 
of the grass. Both streams that fed these ponds 
are dry, or nearly so, in summer, and never car¬ 
ry any very large volume of water. The basins 
that contain the water are small, and mostly 
covered with grass, so that they are rarely turbid 
even in rains. There is little appearance of sed¬ 
iment when the water is drawn off in the spring, 
and it is nearly certain that the beneficial effect 
is mainly owing to the presence of water in the 
winter season. If the water helps the grass 
crop under these unfavorable circumstances, it 
must help it much more when it bears a rich 
deposit, and is applied at the growing season. 
We have in this State two examples at least, 
of the successful application of irrigation to 
farms—that of A. B. Dickinson, of Steuben Co., 
and L. D. Clift, of Putnam County; accounts 
of which were published in the Agricultural 
Transactions for 1855. In both these cases, the 
method is simple and the expense not beyond 
the means of most thriving farmers who have 
streams convenient for tliis purpose. In both, 
the results are all that could have been antici¬ 
pated. The method is to dam the stream at a 
point above the lands to be watered, and to turn 
it on at pleasure, by means of a gate and chan¬ 
nels of distribution. These main channels are 
furnished with side conduits which are merely 
furrows made with the plow and having just 
descent enough to carry the water. When the 
water is turned on these channels overflow, and 
the water is distributed over many acres. 
Mr. Clift pursues bis irrigation even in Winter, 
and it is this feature probably that will be look¬ 
ed upon with more hesitation than any others. 
The water freezes sometimes as it flows, making 
a broad field of ice a foot or more in thickness, 
where it remains until dissolved by the suns of 
Spring. It is probable that the ice affects the 
soil thus protected just as the ice-covered pond 
does. It is completely shielded from the alter¬ 
nate thawing and freezing; the frost does not 
strike in deeply, and comes out very early in the 
Spring. It is his testimony that “ the grass in 
all such places is first in Spring, and grows with 
great rapidity.” He also improves other seasons 
when the stream is charged with sediment, and 
spreads it over the land as a top dressing. Be¬ 
sides the sediment which is carried in the water, 
a good deal collects in the bottom of the pond, 
which is carted out when the water is drawn 
off, and makes excellent manure. This is spread 
upon portions of the field that receive the small¬ 
est supply of water. He cuts about a hundred 
tuns of hay on forty acres of land, which is cer¬ 
tainly double the average for the mowing land 
of the state, and uses no other manure. 
Mr. Dickinson makes great account of increas¬ 
ing the natural deposit of sediment by artificial 
means. He plows and harrows land that is to 
be overflowed, and stirs up the soil after it is 
under water to make it very muddy. Even the 
subsoil that is thus spread over grass land is 
found to be an excellent fertilizer. His grass 
crops are enormous, and the best possible com¬ 
mentary upon his method of irrigation. 
Now we have thousands of farms all over the 
country quite as well, or even better situated 
for artificial watering than these. In many cases 
a few days’ labor by the ordinary working force 
of the farm would make a pond and the neces¬ 
sary channels for watering a few acres. The 
work once begun would demonstrate its econo¬ 
my and lead to the watering of all the available 
portions of the farm. Lands that are now an 
encumbrance, hardly paying taxes, might be 
brought into a high state of productiveness. We 
call the attention of our readers to this very im¬ 
portant topic at this season, when the scythe 
sweeps so many acres prolific in five-finger and 
briars, but poor in grass. Cheap and careless 
irrigation pays, and the more systematic and 
perfect it is, the better it pays, as a general rule. 
Use our streams rightly, and we shall find them 
richer than Pactolus, plowing over golden sands. 
