EXTENT OF IRRIGATION IN EUROPE. 
367 
and in China, works of this sort which must have been in 
existence before man had begun to record his own annals. 
In warm countries, such as most of those just mentioned, 
the effects I have described as usually resulting from the clear¬ 
ing of the forests would very soon follow. In such climates, 
the rains are inclined to he periodical; they are also violent, 
and for these reasons the soil would he parched in summer 
and liable to wash in winter. In these countries, therefore, the 
necessity for irrigation must soon have been felt, and its intro¬ 
duction into mountainous regions like Armenia must have 
been immediately followed by a system of terracing, or at 
least scarping the hillsides. Pasture and meadow, indeed, 
may be irrigated even when the surface is both steep and irreg¬ 
ular, as may be observed abundantly on the Swiss as well as 
on the Piedmontese slope of the Alps; but in dry climates, 
plough land and gardens on hilly grounds require terracing, 
both for supporting the soil and for administering water by 
irrigation, and it should be remembered that terracing, of 
itself, even without special arrangements for controlling the 
distribution of water, prevents or at least checks the flow of 
rain water, and gives it time to sink into the ground instead 
of running off over the surface. 
There are few things in Continental husbandry which sur¬ 
prise English or American observers so much as the extent to 
which irrigation is employed in agriculture, and that, too, on 
soils, and with a temperature, where their own experience 
would have led them to suppose it would be injurious to vege¬ 
tation rather than beneficial to it. The summers in Northern 
Italy, though longer, are very often not warmer than in New 
England ; and in ordinary years, the summer rains are as fre¬ 
quent and as abundant in the former country as in the latter. 
Yet in Piedmont and Lombardy, irrigation is bestowed upon 
almost every crop, while in New England it is never employed 
at all in farming husbandry, or indeed for any purpose except 
in kitchen gardens, and possibly, in rare cases, in some other 
small branch of agricultural industry.* 
* The necessity of irrigation in the great alluvial plain of Northern 
