The Wyandot pioneer. (Upper Sandusky, Ohio) 1853-1868, 1853-11-10
which lie at the foot of the mountains,
smiling serenely out upon Che plain.


smiling serenely out upon Che plain.
Thence the waters proceed with a
more gentle and measured cadence to the
great river, and are drawn off and stayed
from point to point to fill the irrigating
canals and ensure rich reward to the
husbandman's labors. Let any stream
from heavy rains become a raging, foam
ing, milky torrent, and its waters have a
value which the pure element could not
command, and are drown off on every side
until the canals and reservoirs are filed
and all danger of inundation precluded.
Thus the waters are most valuable for ir-
rigation just when they are most easily
and abundantly obtainable for that pur-
pose. The water which has irrigated one
fertile garden or field, far from being ex-
hausted, has been rendered more nourish-
ing thereby, and may now be drawn off to
fertilize the next field lying an inch or so
lower, and thence to the next, and
SO on, unreservedly, to the river, enrich
ing and gladdening all it touches on its
way. Irrigation is the life-b blood of Lom-
hardy; shall it be nothing, teach nothing,
to us A89 :t
If there be country on earth which
one would suppose irrigation unsuited to,
Great Britain is that country. Her ex-
ceedingly moist, cool climate, coupled with
her compact, day subsoil (not universal,
but very extensive } would seem to render
a deficiency of mois ture one of the very
last evils to be apprehended or guarded
against in her Agriculture. And yet her
best farmers are now embarking rapidly
and extensively in Irrigation, finding it
practicable and immensely profitable
Not here, as in Lombardy, is the natural
flow of the streams, in their descent from
the hills to the rivers, relied on; but great
pumps are employed, raising water by
steam OF other power from livers, brooks
and ponds, to hight whence tits carried
by gravitation through metallic and gut
Ita-percha pipes to every point where it is
needed. Mr. Mechi, the ex-London mer-
chant, who retired from trade with a COM
potency to earn another by scientific far
ming, takes the lead in this application,
and his estimates of the increased pro.
ductiveness of lands by reason of irriga-
ton and the profits thus secured would
seem wild to any audience unfamiliar with
the subject. I may state, however, that
he fixes the expense of conveying his
manures in liquid form from his yard to
every portion of his estate as equivalent to
one penny sterling or two cents per cart
load-that is to say, the fertilizing prop
critics which were contained in a tun of
muck or compost are now conveyed to the
soil that requires them at the cost of one
penny. That loading, teaming, unload
ing and spreading in the old way must
have cost far more than this, you cannot
doubt; and beside, the fertilizing liquid,
being free from seeds OF weedy germs of
any kind, and in condition to be readily
and totally absorbed by plants, must be
worth twice as much as if applied in the
old way. Now consider that this load of
manure has been conveyed through and
applied with many tuns of water, just
when the soil is most thirsty, and the
plants most needy, and you can readily
Judge that the tun of manure dissolved in
water and applied through irrigating
pipes at the cost of a penny, must be
worth at least thrice as much as the same
tun applied in the crude, solid state, at a
cost of not less than thrice that sum-
But [ must not dwell on details. You
have the general idea, and can follow it
out at your leisure into all its necessary
results.
Ill What the sister arts teach as to
Agriculture may be fairly summed up in
this proposition:
The workman should be completely
master of his materials and his imple-
ments. He should first thoroughly un-
derstand, in order that he may in the next
place thoroughly control, the elements
from which he is to evolve value and sus-
tenance He who should undertake to
build a ship, in ignorance of the relative
tenacity and resistance to pressure OF
the various woods and metals, would rush
into pursuit for which he had no capac-
ity; so would he who should undertake
the running of a steam-engine in ignor-
ance Of the nature and power of steam.
Yet the man who attempts to farm with an
imperfect knowledge of the nature and
properties of soils in general, of the laws
of Vegetation, the qualities and peculiar
ties of the particular soils whereof his
farm is composed, and the cheapest means
of renovating and increasing their fertili-
ty and productiveness, stands on the same
platform with the ignorant shipwright or
engineer, and braves like disasters, where
OF the largest share will naturally fall to
himself and his family. Agriculture is a
pursuit so vast in its scope, so various in
its processes and objects, that it is difficult