A NEW SYSTEM OF CULTIVATING LAND, AND FOR PREVENTING THE DISASTROUS EFFECTS OF INUNDATIONS
Year: 1861

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Frederick James Eugene Alexander
Gigault d'Olincourt at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with
his Petition, on the 17th September 1861.
I, FREDERICK JAMES EUGENE ALEXANDER GIGAULT D'OLINCOURT, of
Number 113, Rue de Flandre, Paris, do hereby declare the nature of my
said Invention of "A NEW SYSTEM OF CULTIVATING LAND, AND FOR PREVENTING
THE DISASTROUS EFFECTS OF INUNDATIONS," to be as follows, that is to say:
My Invention consists in a new system of cultivating land on elevated
ground and in valleys by irrigating it with rain water, so that inundations will
be transformed into fruitful irrigations, and not any ground is left uncultivated.
I make use of the rain waters, so that their action may be prolonged on vege-
gation as long as the cultivator wishes. By my new system of cultivation the
works are reduced to excavating & filling up the land, which can be done
by manual labour or by ploughs now in use by tilling the ground by a new
method, which produces what I call horizontal tilling, by which system of
tilling the whole of the ground in cultivation is horizontally disposed, rising
gradually as in an amphitheatre, which leaves between each field more or less
elevated borders, which are planted with herbage, vegetables, or plantations,
and reserved for the running off of waters after they have been used for
the irrigation of cultivated land.
The new tilling is effected by commencing the first furrow at the lower
part of the earth, and forming the other furrows successively in a parallel
direction and juxtaposed, so as to effect by successive tillings the excavating

page_text: of the upper part of the field to bring it back to fill up the lower part until
all the superficies of the soil become perfectly horizontal, this position being
the most favorable for cultivation, & producing all over an equal action of
the solar rays and of the water.
Instead of having at the boundaries of the fields furrows for the running
off of the water, as is usual, I raise around the land intended to be cultivated
earth banks or borders, which retain the rain waters as they fall in each field
to the height that the cultivator may consider necessary according to the soil
& the latitude; each field thus becomes an irrigating reservoir, in which the
cultivator can prolong the action of rain water as long as he may think
desirable. In this manner the irrigation is effected all over the land. The
banks or borders of the field above indicated, have inclined trenches more or
less deep made in them arranged like reversed pyramids, & intended for the
plantations of trees; by this arrangement the rain waters are always retained
as soon as they fall, and when the cultivator wishes to cease the irrigation of
the cultivated lands, it suffices to make an opening (or to fill up the hole) in
the earth bank for retaining the water at the part which was at first the most
elevated, and where the trenches commence; then the waters are distributed in
these trenches, and each foot of the trees will be found to be irrigated in the
most favorable manner, their roots serving as natural conductors of the water
to the under soil, which prevents the immediate flow of the waters to the
rivers.
My Invention also consists of a system of retaining water on land, which it
is desired to keep in an inclined position by the employment of dry or green
hedges, and by fences having banks of earth on the side retaining the water...