I know this is small business. But suppose each of the hundred thousand New-England farms, whereof five to ten acres might be thus irrigated at a cost not exceeding $100 per farm, had been similarly prepared to flow those acres last Spring and early Summer, with an average increase therefrom of barely one tun of Hay (or its equivalent in pasturage) per acre. The 500,000 tuns of Hay thus realized would have saved 200,000 head of cattle from being sent to the butcher while too thin for good beef, while every one of them was required for further use, and will have to be replaced at a heavy cost. Shall not these things be considered? Shall not all who can do so at moderate cost resolve to test on their own farms the advantages and benefits that may be secured by Irrigation? XIII. THE POSSIBILITIES OF IRRIGATION. I have given an account of my poor, little experiment in Irrigation, because it is one which almost every farmer can imitate and improve upon, however narrow his domain and slender his fortune. I presume there are Half a Million homesteads in the United States which have natural facilities for Irrigation at least equal to mine; many of them far greater. Along either slope of the Alleghenies, throughout a district at least a thousand miles long by three hundred wide, nearly every farm might be at least partially irrigated by means of a dam costing from twenty-five to one hundred dollars; so might at least half the farms in New-England and our own State. On the prairies, the plans must be different, and the expense probably greater, but the results obtained would bounteously reward the outlay. I shall not see the day, but there are those now living who _will_ see it, when Artesian wells will be dug at points where many acres may be flowed from a gentle swell in the midst of a vast plain, or at the head of a fertile valley, expressly, or at least mainly, that its waters may be led across that plain, adown that valley, in irrigating streams and ditches, until they have been wholly drank up by the soil. I have seen single wells in California that might be made to irrigate sufficiently hundreds of acres, by the aid of a reservoir into which their waters could be discharged when the soil did not require them, and there retained until the thirsty earth demanded them. An old and successful farmer in my neighborhood affirms that Water is the cheapest and best fertilizer ever applied to the soil. If this were understood to mean that no other is needed or can be profitably applied, it would be erroneous. Still, I think it clearly true that the annual product of most farms can be increased, and the danger of failure averted, more cheaply by the skillful application of water than by that of any other fertilizer whatever, Plaster (Gypsum) possibly excepted.