But, alas! even the schemes which have been carried through have not proved altogether successful. With her usual courage and tendency to rush her fences, Victoria embarked quite blithely in the first place on the Mildura scheme, which has at last struggled to success through a series of depressing failures, while the history of the other schemes has been far from cheering. The fact was, nobody knew anything about irrigation, or thought for a moment that there was anything to learn. In many places huge lengths of channelling were badly constructed, badly laid, and so badly placed that the land which would have profited most by the water was left completely dry, while the distribution was so wide that a very great deal was lost in the long channels. As a matter of fact, I believe that the estates in Australia are too large and the population too small to admit at present of a very great deal of effective irrigation, much as it is needed. For a good many years I lived on a sugar estate in Mauritius, which depended completely on irrigation. But, though one of the biggest estates in the island, it would have been altogether lost in any corner of an Australian station; while it was continually thronged with workers, always ready to correct any defective flow or clear out any blocked channel. As Victoria increases her country population, so also will she increase her chances of success in irrigation, for I feel it is only on small, densely cultivated farms that it can have a proper chance of paying for its working expenses. As it is, an extract which I must quote from a Ministerial statement, made not so very long ago, is anything but encouraging: “The State has already spent £1,450,000 on irrigation works. Interest on this at 4 per cent. amounts to £98,000 annually; maintenance, about £47,000; receipts from rates and sales of water average about £35,000. The State irrigation channels command 1,104,000 acres of land, of which 218,000 acres were irrigated last year; but the crop return was trivial (over half the irrigated area was native grass), when compared with the results obtained from similar irrigated areas in other countries having no greater natural advantages.”