370 
American agriculturist. 
I cannot say that the irrigation of lands is 
common in England. It is not. Isolated in¬ 
stances of it, however, exist all over the king¬ 
dom. In one place you will see a meadow, ol 
20, 50, or 100 acres, and in some acres more, 
as in that of the Duke of Portland, the most 
beautiful conceivable, and as productive as 
beautiful, and you will be surprised to be told, 
that, fifteen, twenty, or thirty years ago, that 
meadow was worth but three shillings an acre; 
that under-draining and irrigation have produced 
the change, and that now it rents for a price 
nearly equal to the fee simple value of our best 
lands. In another place, you will see, the sloping 
base of a hill teeming with verdure. You would 
think it the best land in the world. The condi¬ 
tion of unimproved land adjoining shows it to 
have been the worst. You look on this and on 
that, and if the owner is not pn sent to tell you, 
you can see for yourself, that under-draining and 
irrigation make the difference. Indeed you need 
not be told, that one of these fields is worth but 
two or three shillings a year, and that the other 
is worth as many pounds, for the price, as with 
goods exhibited in shop-windows, is written on 
the articles. You could see with your own eyes, 
that a few acres of the one would enrich the 
holder, that twenty fold as much of the other 
would impoverish him. Your readers, I sup¬ 
pose, have all heard of the Maine Yankee, who 
said to the passing stranger : “I’m not so poor 
as you think, for I don’t own this ere land.” In 
another place, you will see a torrent, issuing 
from some elevated glen, turned aside from its 
time-worn channel, and made to spread beauty 
and fertility over a whole mountain slope, where 
before, as is shown by the bordering sterility, 
nothing beautiful or useful grew. It is intensely 
interesting to witness such triumphs of human 
skill over the asperities of nature. 
Irrigation in Europe, so far as I had oppor¬ 
tunity of observing, is confined to grass lands. 
Lands thus improved are used either for mow¬ 
ing or pasturage. If well under-drained, they 
are not unhealthy for grazing animals; though, 
if not thoroughly drained, they produce the 
foot-rot among sheep. Lands that are natu¬ 
rally level require to be thrown into slopes with 
a descent of at least one inch in ten feet. This, 
in countries where a man’s labor is estimated but 
half as high as that of a horse, may be done 
with the spade and wheel-barrow. In our 
country, I think it will have to be done with 
the plow and scraper, or not at all. A fall 
of about five inches in ten feet is the most de¬ 
sirable; one from an inch to a foot and even 
more, in the same distance, will answer the pur¬ 
pose ; though it is manifest that the more gra¬ 
dual the descent, the narrower should be the 
slope between the main water-course and the 
catch-drain next below it, from which the 
water is to be distributed again over another 
slope, and so on. I might go into a detailed 
account of many water-meadows, which fell 
under my observation while abroad; but as 
no two human faces are precisely alike, so 
probably no two pieces of land are exactly 
alike in themselves and in their relations to 
water. An exact description, therefore, of the 
management of one could not become a rule 
for the management of another, even if the first 
were managed in the best possible manner, 
which might not be the case. For this reason, 
I suppose that a statement of the general prin¬ 
ciples on which irrigation is practised, would be 
of greater service to the American farmer than 
any detailed descriptions of w r hat others have 
done. 
All know that water is essential to the growth 
of plants. It is true that the Maker and Exe¬ 
cutor of Nature’s laws, has given to the atmos¬ 
phere those hydraulic powers which secure 
the fall of rain at very nearly such times and in 
such quantities as best to promote vegetation. 
It is true, also, that, by acting in harmony with 
the Creator’s natural laws—directing our action 
with a constant reference to them—we can 
sufficiently guard against injury from the un¬ 
equal distribution of water, in different times 
and places. Sufficiently deep plowing, with 
under-draining where the water will not pass 
ofF readily without, is a complete guaranty 
against any great damage from too much or too 
little rain. The Almighty has promised seed 
time and harvest while the earth endures. He 
has not, however, promised, that there shall 
be a harvest where the ground is not prepared; 
nor, that there shall be as rich a harvest where 
it is but half prepared as where it is well pre¬ 
pared. Every falling rain benefits the well-tilled 
field more than it does the half-tilled. Nearly 
all seeming failures of the divine promise with 
regard to “ seed time and harvest,” may be 
traced distinctly to some fault of the husband¬ 
man. Either he had not studied the Creator’s 
laws, concerning soils, and rains, and vegetable 
growth as he ought, and was therefore ignorant 
of them; or, knowing them, he failed to put his 
action in harmony with them. As with rains, 
those natural irrigators of all fields, so with 
streams, whether natural or formed of drainage 
water, the husbandman who puts his grounds 
in the required condition, derives the greatest 
advantage. 
Although the rains of heaven, for most pur¬ 
poses of agriculture, generally irrigate lands 
enough and seldom too much, provided always 
that the husbandman has done his duty; yet it 
is found that some crops, among which are the 
most nutritious grasses, will do better, if water 
in larger quantities is run over the surface, and 
permitted to sink though the soil and sub-soil 
into the earth. It must not stand on the sur¬ 
face. This would be injurious. It must not 
remain in the soil or sub-soil. In either of these 
three cases its tendency would be to kill out 
the sweet, and to bring in some sour grasses. 
A soil, in order to be improved by irrigation, 
must be sufficiently porous to permit the water 
to pass freely through it; and if the sub-soil is 
impermeable, the land must be thorough-drain¬ 
ed. With these conditions, no doubt whatever 
remains of the benefit of irrigation. Scores of 
cases, as that of-the Duke of Portland, at Well- 
beck, near Mansfield, have proved this as clearly 
as any thing was ever proved; for in several of 
these cases, to my certain knowledge, and I be¬ 
lieve in others also, the poorest of all lands, worth 
in their original state next to nothing, and pro¬ 
ducing sickness in the neighborhood at that, 
are now giving more feed than was ever known 
in the best of lands without irrigating, and are 
highly tributary to the uplands of the farm be¬ 
sides. How the water of irrigation produces 
such effects is not agreed ; the fact that it does, 
seems sufficient for practical purposes; and I 
might therefore proceed directly to those prac¬ 
tical suggestions for the irrigation of land, 
which I intend to make, either now or at some 
future time ; yet, as I am one of those who be¬ 
lieve that we ought to “inquire into the reasons 
of things,” and to search them out if possible, I 
shall first dwell a little on some facts which 
seem to me to throw light on the why and where¬ 
fore of the benefit of irrigation. 
In the first place, it should be kept distinctly 
in mind that irrigation is not the flooding of 
land; that it is the passing of water gently over 
the surface , freely through the soil, and speedily 
away into the deep earth , or through well-laid 
drains, as the case rriay he.. 
In the second place, it is to be considered 
that waters differ much from each other. Some 
are highly charged with sulphate of iron, or 
with the protoxide of iron, or both. Especially 
is this liable to be the case with water from the 
drainage of low lands. To irrigate with such 
waters would be injurious. Other waters are 
nearly pure; but most are charged more or less 
with ingredients favorable to vegetable growth. 
In some cases these ingredients are mostly solu¬ 
ble, ready at once to favor the growth of plants. 
In others, considerable amounts are insoluble 
—vegetable and animal matters floating in the 
water, rather suspended in it, scarcely visible, 
ready to be deposited as the water trickles 
along the surface or enters the soil, and to be¬ 
come soluble under atmospheric influences, and 
thus to minister to the future wants of plants. 
The conclusion can hardly be avoided, that the 
purer the water, the less valuable for purposes 
of irrigation; and the more impure, the more 
valuable. 
With regard to irrigation with water nearly 
pure, the benefit, it would seem must be com¬ 
paratively small, and must arise from the follow¬ 
ing causes: 1st, the water being completely at 
the control of the owner, can be made effectu¬ 
ally to prevent injury from drouth ; and 2d, it is 
capable of absorbing various gases from the air 
and imparting them to the roots of plants. It 
has been ascertained that water absorbs and 
holds in solution about 3|- per cent, of its own 
bulk of oxygen, per cent, of nitrogen, 1-J- of 
hydrogen, 100 or a little more of carbonic acid, 
and upwards of 700 of ammoniacalgas. Now, if 
a portion of water were to pass over sand and peb¬ 
bles,as in the channel of a brook, it might retain 
these gases for a long time ; but passing among 
(he living roots of grass, it may be supposed to 
give them off to the growing plants, as required 
by them, and then to absorb the same again 
from the atmosphere, and again to give them 
to the plants, thus making itself a regular car¬ 
rier of nutritious gases, taking load after load, 
so to speak, from the atmosphere to the roots 
of the growing crops. I do not say that any 
positive proof can be adduced, to show that 
the water used in irrigation performs this office; 
but a presumptive evidence of it arises from the 
fact that the water, after being detained a while, 
by any obstruction, in one place, is found to 
contain less of the above-mentioned gases, than 
that which has been steadily flowing. It would 
seem that the standing water had been deprived 
of its oxygen, carbon and ammonia by the plant 
roots, and owing to its stillness—having a smooth 
unbroken surface—had not been able to re-supply 
itself from the air; while the running water, 
though it might have given off as much, and 
perhaps more, to the roots of grass, had fully 
re-supplied itself from the air, owing to its motion 
