Before buying irrigation machinery, it is a good plan to test the water supply by temporary means. Any good farm pump may be hitched to a gasoline engine to determine if the water supply is lasting or not. Permanent pumping machinery should deliver the water on high ground. A main irrigation ditch may be run across the upper end of the field. This ditch should hold the water high enough so it may be tapped at convenient places to run through the corrugations to reach the roots of the plants to be benefited. There are different systems of irrigation designed to fit different soils. Corrugations are the cheapest and the most satisfactory when soils are loose enough to permit the water to soak into the soil sideways, as well as to sink down. The water should penetrate the soil on both sides of the corrugations for distances of several inches. Corrugations should be straight and true and just far enough apart so the irrigation water will soak across and meet between. Some soils will wash or gully out if the fall is too rapid. In such cases it may be necessary to terrace the land by following the natural contour around the ridges so the water may flow gently. Where the fall is very slight, that is, where the ground is so nearly level that it slopes away less than six inches in a hundred feet, it becomes necessary to prepare the land by building checks and borders to confine the water for a certain length of time. Then it is let out into the next check. In the check and border system the check bank on the lower side has an opening which is closed during the soaking period with a canvas dam. When the canvas is lifted the water flows through and fills the next check. This system is more expensive, and it requires more knowledge of irrigation to get it started, and it is not likely to prove satisfactory in the East. For fruits and vegetables, what is known as the furrow system of irrigation is the most practical. An orchard is irrigated by plowing furrows on each side of each row of trees. The water is turned into these furrows and it runs across the orchard like so many little rivulets. Potatoes are irrigated on the same plan by running water through between the rows after the potatoes have been ridged by a double shovel-plow. This plan also works well with strawberries. After the land is prepared for irrigation, the expense of supplying water to a fruit orchard, strawberry patch or potato field is very little compared with the increase in yield. In fact, there are seasons when one irrigation will save the crop and produce an abundant yield, when otherwise it would have been almost a total loss.