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d great variety of its products, and the part it is to play in our markets. There are three factors in the expectation of a crop-soil, sunshine, and water. In

urface wells, in others by artesian-wells, in others from such streams as the Los Angeles and the Santa Ana, and from reservoirs secured by dams in the heart of the high mountains. It is possible to compute the cost of any one of the systems of irrigation, to determine whether

the product would be immensely improved if the growing stalks and roots could have water when and only when they need it. The difference would be between, say, twenty and forty bushels of grain or roots to the acre, and that means the difference between profit and loss. There is probably not a crop of any kind grown in the great West that would not be immensely benefited if it could be irrigated once o

IN-C

ter is adjusted to the needs of each crop, even on contiguous fields. No two products need the same amount of water, or need it at the same time. The orange needs more than the grape, the alfalfa more than the orange, the peach and apricot less than the orange; the olive, the fig, the almond, the English walnut, demand each a different supply. Depending entirely on irrigation six months of the year, the farmer in Southern California is practically certain of his crop year after yea

. This should only be used where water is scarce, for it trains the roots like a brush, instead of sending them out laterally into the soil. Third, the Riverside method, which is the best in the world, and produces the largest results with the least water and the least work. It is the closest imitation of the natural process of wetting by gentle rain. "A small flume, eight or ten inches square, of common red-wood is laid along the upper side of a ten-acre tract. At intervals of one to three feet, according to the nature of the ground and the stuff to be irrigated, are bored one-inch holes, with a small wooden button over them to regulate the flow. This flume costs a trifle, is left in position, lasts for years, and is always ready. Into this flume is turned from the ditch an irrigating head of 20, 25, or 30 inches of water, generally about 20 inches. This is divided by the holes and the

August, when it is the lowest. But this is no test of the duty of water; the amount actually delivered on the land should be taken. What they actually use for ten acres at Riverside, Redlands, etc., is a twenty-inch stream of three days' run five times a year, equal to 300 inches for one day, or one inch steady run for 300 days. As an inch is the equivalent of 365 inches for

BY ARTESIAN

ON BY PI

ut any artificial watering, there spread abroad a notion that irrigation could be dispensed with. There are large areas, dry and cracked on the surface, where the soil is moist three and four feet below the surface in the dry season. By keeping the surface broken and well pulverized the moisture rises sufficiently to insure a crop. Many Western farmers have found out this secret of cultivation, and more will learn in time the good sense of not spreading themselves over too large an area; that forty acres plan