Excerpt from Irrigation: Its Principles and Practice as a Branch of Engineering Irrigation is a subject which covers much ground, and cannot be confined within the narrow boundaries of a single volume. But the principles on which Irrigation Engineering is based can be collected in small compass, and be illustrated by examples of actual practice to the extent that space allows. What, therefore, this work attempts to do is to set forth the guiding principles that should govern the practice of irrigation, and to furnish illustrations of their application in existing canal systems. The majority of the illustrations have been selected from the wealth of material that the irrigation experience of India and Egypt supplies, for the following reasons. In the first place, I have been personally connected with irrigation in both countries, and can therefore handle the facts, relating to them, as one having authority on the subject, and not as the scribes, Whose methods I might be imitating were I to draw my illustrations from the records of other countries. In the second place, it is India that furnishes examples of irrigation on the largest scale, and that has been the school in which all British irrigation engineers, previously to England's occupa tion of Egypt, have undergone their training. Moreover, the excellent standard work on the subject, The Irrigation Works of India, by R. B. Buckley, provides in a convenient form more than enough material for copious illustrations, and I have made much use of it, with Mr. Buckley's kind permission. But it will be found that Egypt has been the favourite source of my borrowing. There are two good (so it appears to me) reasons for this. The first is that I am intimately acquainted with Egypt as an irrigating country. The second is that Egypt is par excellence the country of irrigation, as it is wholly depen dent for its existence on its mother, the Nile, from which it has never been weaned. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.