WATER is no less necessary to vegetable than to animal life. This beautiful and wonderful fluid, so familiar that we forget to admire it, and so universally bestowed that we fail to be duly thankful for it, is one of the great blessings of existenee, covering our fields with verdure, and our tables with plenty, and producing all that is pleasing and picturesque in nature. According to the greater or less abundance of water, a country becomes fruitful or barren: according to the nearness or distance of considerable streams, towns and cities rise to importance, or fall into comparative insignificance.

Water being the great means of life and nourishment to plants, it follows that a regular supply is necessary to

ensure their healthfulness. The rains that occur at particular seasons, and, in some countries, at distant intervals, are not sufficient to support vegetable life, and large districts would therefore become desolate if it were not for the industry of the inhabitants in watering the land by artificial means.

Of the importance and value attached to supplies of water in Eastern countries, there is abundant evidence in Scripture; some of the richest promises being conveyed under the simile of dew, showers, and springs. Thus, when great spiritual blessings are promised, it is said, "Thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not," Isa. lviii. 11. And again, "For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring. And they shall spring up as among the grass, as willows by the water-courses," Isa. xliv. 3, 4. In the universal gladness of Christ's kingdom, one cause of joy is thus typified: "For in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass, with reeds and rushes,” Isa. xxxv. 6, 7.

We might fill many pages with similar passages, showing that water-springs, rains, and dew, were the most esteemed among earthly gifts, and therefore the most appropriate to be the figures of spiritual blessings.

Early in the history of the world, men had learned to supply by artificial means the lack of natural moisture. The art of irrigation appears to have been known to the earliest husbandmen. In passages of Scripture such as "Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters; that send forth thither the feet of the ox and the ass," Isa. xxxii. 20; and also the following, "Cast thy bread upon the waters; for thou shalt find it after many days," allusion is doubtless made to the practice com

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mon for ages in eastern countries of flooding their grounds with water previously to sowing their most precious crops. How these husbandmen first became acquainted with the art of irrigation we are not told, but there is much reason in the supposition that the annual overflowing of the river Nile, and the benefits derived to Egypt by that means, first suggested the idea of artificial irrigation to the Egyptians, and that other nations borrowed from them the fruits of their experience. However this may be, the Egyptians themselves practised the art on a scale of such surpassing magnitude, that their canals and vast artificial lakes have been deemed "more praiseworthy monuments of their genius, than all the temples and cemeteries with which they have covered their country." Various hydraulic machines were in ancient use, some of which appear to have resembled the water wheels of the fendistricts of England, and to have been worked by the feet of men, after the manner of the tread-mill. Doubtless this laborious method of watering the ground was common in Egypt during the sojourn of the children of Israel in that land, for Moses drew the following remarkable contrast between the climate and customs of Egypt, where rain seldom falls, and the more genial climate of the promised land. "For the land whither thou goest in to possess it, is not as the land of Egypt, from whence ye came out, where thou sowest thy seed, and waterest it with thy foot, as a garden of herbs; but the land whither ye go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven," Deut. xi. 10, 11.

The method of raising and distributing water in Egypt at the present time, demands a great amount of labour. Water from the Nile is collected at certain times in large cisterns on the banks of the river. For this purpose the screw of Archimedes was formerly used, but now leathern buckets, or Persian wheels, are employed. The latter machines are placed all along

the banks of the Nile, from the sea to the cataracts, their situation being higher, and consequently the difficulty of raising the water being greater, in the upper portions of the stream. When the grain-crops, or the saffron, melons, sugar-canes, &c., need refreshment, a plug is taken out from the bottom of the cistern, and the water which gushes out is guided from one rill to another by persons whose office it is to manage the flooding of the ground.

Sometimes the water is merely raised by wicker baskets, lined with leather. Each basket is managed by two men, and is held by cords between them. Lowering and filling the basket at the river, they swing it over the banks into the canal, which conveys it at once to the land requiring water.

In Bengal the fields are diligently watered, or they would yield little produce. Wells are dug in the highest parts, and by means of bullocks, and a rope over a pulley, water is raised in buckets, and carried in small channels to every part of the field. Without this diligent watering of the soil in hot countries, rice, which furnishes food to the greater part of the human race, could not be cultivated. Accordingly, over the vast region of Southern Africa, the irrigation of the land by means of rivers, brooks, lakes, and wells, is a labour essential to human life. A machine similar to the Persian wheel is used in China for raising water.

In Southern Europe, also, irrigation is extensively carried on. In Italy, especially on the banks of the Po, it was practised long before the time of Virgil, and is zealously continued to this day. The waters of all the chief rivers of Northern Italy, as well as of numerous minor streams, are thus employed. From Venice to Turin, the entire country is said to be one great watermeadow, for the watering is by no means confined to grass-lands, but is conveyed into the hollows between the ridges in corn-lands, is distributed over the lowlands, where rice is cultivated, and is carried round the