A Treatise on the Law of Irrigation: Including the Law of Water-Rights and the Doctrine of Appropriation of Waters, As the Same Are Construed and Applied in the States and Territories of the Arid and Semi-Humid Regions of the United States

Excerpt from A Treatise on the Law of Irrigation: Including the Law of Water-Rights and the Doctrine of Appropriation of Waters, as the Same Are Construed and Applied in the States and Territories of the Arid and Semi-Humid Regions of the United States

The present work has been written with the hope that it may prove serviceable to the profession in their investigation of a subject comparatively new in the history of American jurisprudence. Irrigation was born from the absolute meces sities of the settlers of an Arid Region. Although practiced in the United States by an English speaking people but about fifty years it has been the principal means of the settlement and development of that portion of our country west of the rooth meridian, until to-day it has become a subject of paramount importance to the Whole country.

Involving, as it does, a use of water based upon the principle of priority of appropriation - Which doctrine was not recognized by the common law - irrigation has caused numberless controversies concerning water-rights. As the result of these contentions a mass of court decisions and statutory law upon the subject has been evolved which governs the subject of waters in the Arid Region.

Part One of this volume is devoted to a general discus sion of the nature and history of irrigation and the general laws that govern the subject in the Arid Region.

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