projected there for building canals intended to water about 100,000 acres of land; his measurements, however, showed that there was only water enough for less than half the projected acreage. There seemed to have been no idea of measurement, beforehand, to determine the amount of water available. Nothing, practically, was known about figuring water in that kind of work, and it seemed to Professor Nagle that there was urgent need for some system of education in irrigation matters.

PROFESSOR C. M. WOODWARD.-Professor Woodward said he supposed a man owns what water falls on his roof, and that if he digs a well he owns what he gets out of that. Now if a man owns fifty square miles of land, including the sources of a stream, he would like to know if that man owns the stream.

PROFESSOR MEAD.-Professor Mead said it would depend on what State the man lived in; where the land was; that in nearly all the Western States there has been established what is locally known as the doctrine of appropriation. In theory that means that whoever has beneficially applied the water of a stream first is entitled to control and protect it forever. This is the doctrine of appropriation and priority. Where the water came from had nothing to do with the question of ownership and control. If a spring rises and falls down into a stream and the stream is appropriated before the spring has been acquired, the proprietors can compel the owners of the land surrounding that spring to let it run forever. It belongs to the people who appropriated the stream. At first the doctrine had sensible limitations, and

there is no objection to it if it is really restricted to beneficial use. But in time claims were filed, and a man found it just as easy to put in a large claim as a small one, and there was no official determination of what was being done. Public sentiment greatly changed and the actual use of water began to be regarded as less important, and the declaration in the recorded statement began to be the important thing. There was no administrative control, no examination as to how these rights were to be established. Everything was left to the courts, and men who went to have their rights legally determined would oftentimes agree among themselves as to how much each man should claim, and they would go into court and institute proceedings to have their rights judicially determined. The proceedings were held miles away from the stream. There would be no adverse testimony, and the only evidence before the court was that of the party seeking to acquire control of the property, and they would oftentimes get rights to a hundred times what could be deflected from the stream. In a number of States an adjudication of that kind becomes a vested right after a few years, and then the man is the owner of it. Now the injustice of this is that he dictates the terms. It is not a question of ownership of the land, but certain greedy people have complied with certain legal formalities that determined the ownership.

Now, some standard for the use of water, some approximation, is necessary, in the proper planning of irrigation works, as the unit of value is in financial matters. You cannot tell how much water is needed

in a particular month, or year, but a great deal of irrigation work has been built in the West with no better basis than simply individual judgment or conjecture. There is a necessity for some engineering knowledge when you come to the question of the disposal of the water that fills a canal, because a great many of the contracts are made perpetual. During the past four years the Department of Agriculture has been carrying on very extensive measurements and has been keeping a continuous record, to determine just how much water has been used, what amount was lost in transit, and how much was actually used on land, and the average for these four years has been remarkably close, over a very large number of measurements in ten or twelve States, showing that the water measured at the heads of ditches varies between four and four and one-half feet. That is, the loss is enough to cover the land to a depth of four to four and one-half feet. Now, to show how far that varies from the statements and estimates on which works have been built, for nearly all of the earlier canals in Colorado the water contracts and dimensions of the canals were based on a requirement of about seven and one-half feet. Some of the more recent contracts have gone just as far to the other extreme, providing for water enough to cover the land to a depth of one foot. There is a large canal company in California which would be very glad to wipe all its contracts off the slate if its customers would surrender them and make a new deal which should promote economy. A great many of those old contracts are based on the acre, without any regard what

ever to how much was furnished, and they have all been framed on the advice of engineers. That is just like agreeing to furnish a man with groceries without any estimation as to how much shall be consumed. The man who pays two dollars an acre thinks he must pour on all he can, but the contracts are perpetual and he won't surrender. There is only one kind of contract to make, and that is one which allows each man to pay for just what he gets, and where every consumer can get the benefit of his economy and skill. But there are very few contracts of that kind in the West.

PROFESSOR WILLISTON.-Does that measurement represent one foot per year?

PROFESSOR MEAD.-Yes.

ELECTROCHEMISTRY AS AN ENGINEERING

COURSE.

BY C. F. BURGESS,

Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin.

The justification of establishing a new course of study in engineering schools lies in the demand which the industries make for men having training which such courses offer. The rapid development in the application of electrical energy in producing chemical transformations which has taken place during the past decade has given rise to the new course of study which some or our engineering schools have recently organized or are about to institute, i. e., applied electrochemistry.

Electrochemistry may be considered the pioneer among the various branches of electrical engineering, antedating and making possible telegraphy and other subsequent developments. The popular impression that electrochemistry is distinctly a new field arises from the renewed interest which has recently been attached to it through modern scientific and experimental study, with subsequent evolution of theories, but more especially from the meteoric growth of what may be called our electrochemical and electrometallurgical industries. Scientific progress in electrochemistry and industrial progress in the same line have not been of the "hand-in-hand" variety, but there has been a considerable degree of independence