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 apples, pears, bananas, sugar-cane, hemp, cotton (in Palestine), and many vegetables (not, however, for water-melons, pumpkins, tomatoes, marrows, aubergines, or onions). It may be performed in three ways: (1) by leading water from rivers, as in the Damascus plains from the Barada and other streams, in the Buka'a from the Litani, and at Homs, Hama, and Antioch from the Orontes; (2) by raising water from wells by means of the ancient waterwheel worked by animals; (3) by mechanical pumping, either from rivers of which the bed is too deep for the first method, or from wells. Suction pumps driven by petrol or gas engines were introduced by the Jewish and German colonists, and have been spreading to the native cultivators; wind-motors are used at a number of stations on the Hejaz Railway, and by some German colonists. Irrigation from wells is practised chiefly in the coastal plain between Gaza and Haifa, where water is commonly found at about sea level, and wells rarely attain a depth of 50 metres. Recently much deeper excavation has been tried in higher localities; water is obtained from wells of over 90 metres on the spur of Mount Carmel, and has been reached by mechanical boring at twice that depth in Judaea. An elaborate riverside pumping station has been set up by a German company on the banks of the Auja, whence water is supplied to about 1,500 donum (340 acres) of land at the Jewish colony of Petach Tikwa. A more extended use of this river has been projected, and would not be difficult, while other irrigation schemes, more or less practicable, have also been mooted. The Jordan, however, like some other Palestine rivers, has too deep a bed to lend itself very readily to such projects. Much remains to be done in the way of economising the country's winter surplus by means of reservoirs or dams, a method far more developed in early times than at present.

Drainage on a small scale by laying pipes or planting eucalyptus trees has been carried out by colonists in Palestine; the extensive marshes on the coastal plains