— 21 — ensures a valuable medium of education. The respoiisibiliticH of the administration are limited to the provision, running and maintenance of the pumping station and the construction of head works, while control of irrigation is effected as part and parcel of the work of field instruction. The landowners are collectively responsible for the provision of canals and distributory channels, which are constructed and maintained by the administration against loan funds. Implements, livestock and seed may also be provided to the limit of available funds and approved security, while the granting of advances on stored crops, the financing of transport and disposal are legitimate administrative functions pending the organisation of local markets for such staples as cotton.

Profit Sharing.—The establishment of new agricultural stations in the Gezira at Tayiba and Barakat has afforded an opportunity for the trial of a co-operative system calculated to obviate many of the difficulties experienced at Zeidab. Organised with a view to determining the commercial possibilities of the Gezira plain as a cotton area, pending construction of the projected dam at Sennar and complementary irrigation works, these estates are administered on behalf of the Sudan Government by the Sudan Plantations Syndicate, which also controls the destinies of the Zeidab Estate. Under existing arrangements the Government provides the land and the water and receives 35 per cent, of the proceeds of the crop. The Syndicate provides the financing, direction and management, and receives 25 per cent. This leaves 40 per cent, to go to the tenant for his time and trouble. This bold attempt to cut the Gordian knot of credit, tenure and administration has the all-important merit of simplicity, and pending the education of tenants in cotton cultivation, their accumulation of a capital reserve and the organisation of a local cotton market, the arrangement may be considered equitable. Whether, however, in the future the trained cultivator with reserve funds adequate to his current expenses and the cost of placing his crop on a local market, may be able to justify a claim to a larger share in the proceeds, remains to be seen. Subsequent adjustment of profit-sharing is doubtless contemplated under the scheme, when a skilled tenantry has been called into being.

The Irrigation Unit.—In the case of our own undertaking, financial considerations have restricted the scale of initial experiments, and the question arises as to what may be an economic minimum in size for the irrigation unit.

Assuming that operations are to be confined to riverain lands for which title has been granted, the topography of the river bank affords an irrigable area sloping back from the flood bank with an average width of about half a mile.

The main canal will consequently parallel the bank and deliver water to distributory canals at right angles to the former. Seepage and evaporation impose an economic limit on the length of the main canal, varying with its