of flooding or soaking from
big ditches have something to learn in Southern California."

As to the quantity of water needed in the kind of soil most common in
Southern California I will again quote Mr. Van Dyke: "They will tell you
at Riverside that they use an inch of water to five acres, and some say
an inch to three acres. But this is because they charge to the land all
the waste on the main ditch, and because they use thirty per cent. of
the water in July and 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 one day, or one inch for 365
days, 300 inches for one day equals an inch to twelve acres. Many use
even less than this, running the water only two or two and a half days
at a time. Others use more head; but it rarely exceeds 24 inches for
three days and five times a year, which would be 72 multiplied by 5, or
360 inches--a little less than a full inch for a year for ten acres."

[Illustration: IRRIGATION BY ARTESIAN-WELL SYSTEM.]

[Illustration: IRRIGATION BY PIPE SYSTEM.]

I have given room to these details because the Riverside experiment,
which results in such large returns of excellent fruit, is worthy of the
attention of cultivators everywhere. The constant stirring of the soil,
to keep it loose as well as to keep down useless growths, is second in
importance only to irrigation. Some years ago, when it was ascertained
that tracts of land which had been regarded as only fit for herding
cattle and sheep would by good ploughing and constant cultivation
produce fair crops without 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 planted and cultivated will give a
better return than eighty acres planted and neglected. Crops of various
sor