7

LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL.

DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, UNITED STATES GEOLOGICAL SURVEY, DIVISION OF HYDROGRAPHY, Washington, November 26, 1897.

SIR :

I have the honor to transmit herewith a paper entitled Irrigation Systems in Texas, by William Ferguson Hutson, and to recommend that it be published in the series of pamphlets on Water-Supply and Irrigation. This manuscript was prepared in accordance with a request made to Prof. J. H. Connell, director of the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station. Professor Connell found that it was impossible for him to give the necessary time to field investigation and the preparation of a report of results, and therefore recommended that the work be intrusted to Mr. Hutson. The field work was carried on during May and June of 1897; the paper was written during July and transmitted early in August. The data were necessarily accumulated in a relatively short time, and the author considers the paper somewhat in the light of a preliminary report. A number of illustrations used in this paper have been obtained through the courtesy of Mr. Robert T. Hill, geologist of this Survey, from his paper in Part II of the Eighteenth Annual Report.

In the preparation of this manuscript for publication considerable liberty has been taken with the arrangement and the manner of presentation. While the statements of fact have been preserved, such changes have been made in the character of the paper as seemed necessary to bring it into harmony with the series as a whole. In particular a somewhat arbitrary geographic arrangement has been adopted in place of one based on considerations of quantity of rainfall, as it appeared undesirable to make the assumption that irrigation is governed by questions of mean annual precipitation.

Very respectfully,

F. H. NEWELL,

Hydrographer in Charge.

Hon. CHARLES D. WALCOTT,

Director United States Geological Survey.