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the way for the introduction of improved methods which must necessarily be

based upon a broader margin of profit. In present circumstances the rain-

farmer is a gambler with all the gambler's instincts, including aversion to thrift,

while the samad and his partners on the sakia are working in a vicious circle,

raising by dint of sustained effort a bare livelihood for themselves, their families and the sakia bulls.

The possibility of substituting modern pumping machinery for such an

anachronism as the sakia compels consideration, and commercial tests of a variety

of driving machinery and pumps have figured prominently in the work of the

Research Farm. The enquiry has necessarily ^.ssumed a two-fold character,

the establishment of the cost and duty of pumped water paving the way for a

consideration of its emplojTuent on a large scale.

The chequered career of agricultural estates in the northern provinces had been attributed variously to extravagant pumping costs, an unfortunate

choice of crops and varieties, the difficulty of obtaining satisfactory tenants,

inadequate and costly labour supplies, and everywhere to the difficulty of

collecting arrears from debtors who could ofEer no preliminary security for

water supplied on credit. Of these drawbacks the first two are directly attribut-

able to the absence of exhaustive preliminary enquiry, while all other aspects

of the problem involve the question of tenure.

The Fuel Problem.—The choice of pumping plant will necessarily be

determined by the relative costs and values of available fuel supplies. A basis

of comparison is furnished by wood, which is obtainable from local sources

at a cost of approximately 500 milliemes a ton delivered to the pump. The

cost of imported coal, which in normal times can never be purchased for less than

£3 a ton in Khartoum, has proved almost-prohibitive, even when employed in such

high efficiency plant as the super-heated steam locomobile installed at the

Gezira Test Stations.

Recording a loss of £E.6,000 on current expenditure and receipts for the first

and second agricultural years at the Tayiba Station, the manager attributes this

result exclusively to a cost of £E.3.4-00 per ton for coal. To the same factor

one is inclined to attribute in large part the disappointing returns and lack of

progress on a majority of the six estates in the Khartoum and Berber Provinces,

for which land has been granted by the Government with a view to the encourage-

ment of cotton cultivation. Five of these plantations had collectively, in 1910,

only about 1,000 feddans planted with cotton, and have not extended the area

since then.* Indeed, a steady reduction in the area of cotton cultivated under

artificial irrigation, and consequently not affected by the character of the

rainfall, has been recorded, coupled with the abandonment of several estates. A decrease in the total from 10,772 to 8,903 feddans is noted for the years 1912-13.

* Report of the Ninth International Cotton Congress, 1913.