cost from $500 to $1500 or more, though the average cost is more nearly the lower than the higher figure.

Then come the compound duplex (or high duty) steam pumping engines of usual water-works type, pumping from reservoirs or rivers. These large steam plants being expensive are not in general use, parties who could well afford the investment preferring to await the experience of others with similar plants.

A STEAM PUMPING PLANT.

Geo. M. Munger, of Eureka, Greenwood Co., Kansas, has 500 acres of orchard. He built an earth dam behind which he impounds 700 acre feet of water. He proposes to increase the storage capacity to 1600 acre feet.

He has two boilers, each 35 H. P. compound duplex pumps, capable of lifting

these

four million gallons a day against a lift of 49 feet above the pumps. Cost of plant to date something over $15,000. Estimated cost of enlarged plant $25,000. He says he prefers not to give publicity to his figures as to gross value of crop, profits from water investment, etc., as items vary so widely in practice that it would not do to publish them." However, he said to the State Board of Horticulture, very recently, "The question of whether or not it pays is the vital one to be considered. Should a man obtain by irrigation 100 bushels of corn per acre and get 15 or 20 cents per bushel for it he would not be making headway rapidly, but if a man has a bearing orchard that is yielding an occasional crop of from 50 to 100 bushels per acre of which one-half to three fourths must be classed as seconds or culls, and if by irrigating that orchard

A TYPICAL PRAIRIE IRRIGATION PLANT.
D. M. Frost, Garden City.

he can increase the crop to three times the quantity and have it all grade fancy, it is easy to see that, at any prices for fruits that have been known to prevail, he could afford to spend a very considerable sum per acre to install an irrigation plant.

"Then if, in place of an occasional crop, the irrigation will give him regular annual crops of this class, it requires no bookkeeping to discover that it is profitable."

Gasoline has taken a notion to advance since it has come into considerable use as a pumping power. Coal sells at from four to six dollars on the plains and

the need of a cheap, reliable power for pumping offers inventive genius a prolific field. The "Defender" and the "Mogul" do not supply the need.

The wind is lightest and the sun strong. est during the driest months. Who will give us a practical helimotor and reap the reward that awaits him?

THE AVERAGE RETURN PER ACRE.

Pump irrigation, or anything else, is a failure if it does not pay. The following table gives returns from certain crops as reported by quite a number of prominent irrigators on the Western Kansas plains. Each item, being the average of those reported to the writer, would seem to be entirely within the reach of any intelligent and industrious irrigation farmer.

ing the data from which this table is made there is still enough margin to justify the erection of pumping plants when water is at any depth at which it is ordinarily found in abundance.

Good judgment dictates in general the cultivation of various crops on the same farm-for example early potatoes and late cabbage thus making a given monthly supply of water do double duty. In favorable soils deep plowing and winter irrigation (storing the water in the subsoils) still further increases the duty so that all the year irrigation may be made to cover three times the acreage of ninety days' summer surface watering.

In general the larger pumping plants of either class are the more economical for reasons which it seems not necessary to explain.

By reason generally of a saving in first cost other combinations are in occasional use: a second-hand steam thresher engine belted to centrifugal pump, animal power geared to endless chain or belt of elevator buckets or board buckets lifting in box spouts.

The whole matter of pumping water for irrigation is so new to our people that they often adopt make-shift arrangements till they can see with their own eyes what a little water does for them. How many New York farmers pay $10 or $20 an acre annually for fertilizers and then reap, on an average, only a half or two-thirds of a maximum crop because of a partial drought at some time during the growing period. Unreliable water by canals has been costing the average irrigator of the United States almost exactly one dollar a year per acre. Reliable water by pumps, properly planned, costs from one to three dollars in the valleys proper and as high as five or even ten dollars on the higher lands—including interest.

Where is the fruit or vegetable grower who does not, nearly every year, realize that he could well afford to pay five dollars an acre or even more, rather than to have suffered from the deficiency of water that visited him at some time during the growing season?

(To be continued.)

THE

HE size of the checks to contain the water in irrigation by flooding will also depend upon the head of water at your service.

Suppose you have two cubic feet a second, or one hundred miner's inches for ten acres. This is head enough for most any orchard work on almost any soil worth cultivating at all, and though for alfalfa much more may be used, it is quite ample if no more can be had. Suppose the checks are twenty feet square, which would give them an area of four hundred square feet. It would then take two cubic feet a second but two hundred seconds to fill one a foot deep. But you rarely want more than the equivalent of three inches of rain at a time, or one-fourth of an acre foot. This would fill the check in fifty seconds. A line of checks to watch and let the water from one to the other as fast as filled and have no breaking away of the

And

water will keep you and two other average men hopping about pretty lively. the chances are you will find any kind of waterproof boots too slow as compared with bare legs. There is no room for style in this work. It is very strict business, and often there is a very short time in which to do it. If you want to hire less help, you will make the checks larger. But here you may be limited by the nature of the crop as well as by the slope of the land. If it is an orchard it will probably be more convenient to have the ridges in the center between the trees. It is impossible to lay down any rule. The right thing is a see-saw between several extremes. In some cases it will pay to use a smaller head to avoid making too large checks, and on the contrary you may have to make them large because you are limited to so short a run that you have to use a very large head to get over the ground

within the time allowed you to run the water.

It is best to decide at the outset how much water you will put on a tract in a given time.

Two cubic feet a second will cover ten acres to an average depth of three inches in about fifteen hours. On account of mistakes in printing you had better figure over for yourself all such matters, and not rely on printed figures anywhere. But you will rarely need to put on even that amount of water at once. A depth of two inches, which can be put on in about ten hours, is equal to three inches of rain, as it generally comes, and this is enough at a time for almost any thing, unless the ground is very dry, or it is to be a long time before you can get water again. On a square ten-acre tract there will be about eleven hundred checks of twenty feet square, or thirty-three rows thirty-three checks long. Ten hours' run

of two cubic feet a second, giving the equivalent of two inches in depth, would be six hundred minutes or but a trifle over half a minute to a check. But if as small as twenty feet, you do not turn the whole head into one check, but take them in tiers of several. A tier of six would thus give you a little over three minutes to a check. But, then, time is lost in dividing the stream and letting it from one check to the next as soon as one is filled. On the whole it is lively work, but when everything is well arranged, flooding beats the capricious clouds so much that you readily forgive it for keeping you up sometimes in the middle of the night while the man who has small streams trickling down small furrows is serenely snoring.

Checks are generally so arranged that when one is full, or nearly so, the water flows from it to the next one. Sometimes this flow will need help, and where the land is to be broken up again after irrigating they had better be made sometimes so that one will not feed the next one as there is danger of the bank cutting out too soon. How strong or high to make the bank will depend much upon the nature of the soil as well as of the crop. Where the soil is very light it is best to make the ridge so that you have to break it. This is not much of a task 28 you have to be there anyhow, and if the water gets away from you, a dozen men may not stop it before it has done mischief that will cost you much more labor than opening the checks.

But

if the ground is not to be broken up after wetting, as in alfalfa fields, then the lower ridge may sometimes be made so as to feed the next check, and so on to the end of the line, unless you feed each from the ditch direct, which is often done where the checks are large. But it is safer to cut the checks so as to discharge all water quickly. In any case the ridges, if permanent, must be made very strong and very broad at the base. When the roots have taken possession of the top soil a very light stand will prevent cutting of the soil and accidental breaking of the check. All trouble is, however, best avoided by a wooden gate large enough to feed properly from check to check, and it can readily be seen so as not to be in the way of driving machinery over the land. With these properly set, a breach of a well-made check is almost impossible.

MAKING THE CHECKS.

This, of

A common way of making the checks is by throwing up ridges with a plow or scraper. On some soils two plow furrows running in opposite directions, so as to throw the sod to the center, are enough for almost all temporary checks. course, means very level ground, and it may be so nearly level that it is not necessary to throw the two furrows together. And some ground is so near a perfect level that one furrow will often do. Stubble is often wet in this way to prepare it for plowing, and by making the furrows only a few feet apart, land quite sloping may be well wet. This is a good enough way to prepare some ground for plowing. But in all cases where the ground is already so loose that a scraper may be used, it is best to throw up a good ridge, for with that a larger amount of water may be put into the ground with much less danger of uneven wetting.

It

What is probably the best scraper for this purpose can be made by any one. is called a "ridger" and is nothing but a sled with solid board runners. These converge at one end and diverge at the other according to the ease with which the soil will scrape and the size of the ridge you are to make. One five feet long with the opening between the runners a foot or so wide at one end and three at the other will make checks strong enough on most soils to hold water five inches deep if the soil is in good cultivation to scrape. But the size of the ridger will vary with soils