Correspondence. Irrigation in Lower Egypt.

Abstract

He had noticed, in traversing the portion of the Delta which the Author considered specially suitable for that mode of irrigation, that nearly all the villages mere built on hillocks. It seemed as if the villages, which no doubt had existed from time immemorial, had been purposely placed in such situations as to render basin irrigation possible, and he did not well see how the salt, which now encumbered the land, and in places rested like snow upon the ground, was to be got rid of except by flooding the whole area of the fields at high Nile, letting the water drain through, thus washing out the salts and leaving the deposit of rich mud on the surface. IIe did not think there was any other method that would restore the land to the fertility which evidently it had a t one time enjoyed. Lieut.-GeneralLieut.-General F. H. RUNDALL said that the same thing had Rundall* occurred in almost all the deltas in India, especially in the Go; davery District, in the neighbourhood of a large lake situated at the water-sink of the Rivers Godavery and Kistna. There the efflorescence on the soil was in large quantities, but as soon as the canals were excavated, fresh water laden with silt was sent down during the flood season when all the lands were flooded, not for any length of time, but periodically, and resulted in the finest crops being afterwards raised on that very soil.