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During the last few years general interest has been aroused in irrigation, and its importance to many portions of Texas is being better appreciated. At this time a discussion of the development of irrigation and its present condition may afford instructive suggestions not only to citizens of the State, but to persons in other parts of the country. The variety of geologic and climatic conditions and the mixed population have given rise to many methods of practice, so that in Texas there may be found representatives of nearly every system of irrigation occurring in the United States. Every degree of excellence may be noted, from that of modern machinery for raising water down to the most primitive devices for supplying it to the field. In the arid and semiarid portions of the State the methods of the early Spanish settlers are employed. Most of the cultivation is done by Mexican laborers or tenants, who cling to the old systems. Thus on most of the ditches the distribution of the water is by the Spanish method of days and hours, each holder of a water right having the use of the ditch in his turn.

The methods of applying the water are usually copied from those of the Mexicans, which consist of flooding the crops by means of little embankments or ridges of earth from 6 inches to a foot in height, so arranged as to convert the fields into checks of a size often absurdly diminutive. This system of watering has, indeed, been very largely modified by most of the American irrigators, so as to facilitate the use of machine tools in handling the crop; but the water is still wastefully used. It is to be hoped that in the present general development of irrigation more progressive methods will be inaugurated for both the distribution and the application of the water.

The early history of irrigation in Texas is hidden in the unwritten annals of the past. Several of the valleys of the Trans-Pecos country show signs of having once supported a teeming population. The lines of their irrigation canals can yet be traced for miles, while arrowheads, stone implements for grinding corn, and other relics can be found in considerable quantities. It must, however, be left to the