_Falls and Regulators._—For purposes of irrigation the fall of the country surface is excessive, and works have to be built at intervals along a canal, after the point where it begins to irrigate, to hold up the water-surface to a sufficient height to flow over the fields. These works are generally placed where the canal splits up into branches, and they take the form of a collection of small weirs. Where the maximum water-levels below all the weirs of such a group never rise above the level of their weir-sills we have a “free fall” in the case of each weir, and the discharge over each sill is directly proportional at all seasons to the length of the sill, which in each weir is made proportional to the area irrigated from the canal below the weir. Thus the collection of weirs not only holds up the water for the irrigation from the canal above it, but acts automatically as a just distributor of water to the canals below it. Such a group of weirs is called a _nasbah_, an Arabic word signifying “proportion.” The arrangement is thoroughly understood and appreciated by the Fayûm cultivators, and is useful in rendering unnecessary the employment of a numerous establishment of low-paid agents—a great end to gain in a country where the inferior employés are so easily corrupted. There are, besides the nasbahs, a large number of small masonry works, as head regulators, sluice heads to branch canals, syphons, aqueducts, and pipe heads scattered all over the province, but there is nothing peculiar in them as irrigation works. [Illustration: PLATE VI. NASBAH MITERTARIS.] The upper bridge at Lahûn has hitherto been closed by vertical needles, but in 1892 it has been altered, and will in future be regulated by horizontal planks. The openings have also all been made one width, namely, 3 metres. _Crops._—The area on which land tax was paid in 1891 was Ushuri lands 131,155 feddans. Kharagi „ 102,146 „ ------- Total 233,301 „ The total amount received into the Government treasury on this area was L.E. 132,668, which gives an average of 57 piastres a feddan, or 11_s._ 2¾_d._ an acre. The actually cultivated area of the Fayûm is said to be about 280,000 feddans. Almost the whole of this area is under crop during the flood season and winter, and about 50,000 to 60,000 feddans are planted with summer crops, chiefly cotton.