British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 400

CHAPTER X.

duty for different crops under different conditions and systematic measurements are taken of the water used in actual practice in Government agricultural stations. Representative Arabs who own gardens and groves and the Jewish Agricultural Research station at Rehovoth have shown willingness to co-operate with Government in this.

SALINITY EXPERIMENTS.

42. A number of the strongest springs and many wells yield water of varying degrees of salinity. Examples are the Kurdani springs near Acre, some of the Beisan springs, an! the wells to the south and east of Gaza. The 'Asi at Beisan contains nearly a hundred parts of salinity per hundred thousand.

43. The Government finance a series of greenhouse and field experiments being carried out in the Agricultural Research station at Rehovoth, to investigate the possibility of using saline water for irrigation. The results achieved so far are interesting since they show that the use of chemical fertilizer may make it possible to obtain high yields of certain crops. with water of a salinity previously thought too high for irrigation purposes.

TEE HULEH.

44. The Huleh scheme is described on pages 257 to 259 of the report of the Royal Commission, who expressed the view that it would be necessary for Government to enact legislation to enable it to control the irrigation. A report on a scheme for the reclamation of the lake and marshes and for the drainage and irrigation of the whole has in had been drawn up by the British consulting engineers, Rendel, Palmer and Tritton. Scanty hydrological data. being available at that time, their report must be considered as preliminary and as a has is upon which to found further surveys and the collection of further hydraulic data necessary for the preparation and design of a scheme in detail. An energetic attempt has been made by the Water Commissioner's staff to complete the necessary investigations. A contour survey with contours at t metre intervals over an area of 80,000 dunums north of the marsh has been completed. Special transport facilities had to be provided to enable the survey parties to withdraw from the area, which is malarial, every afternoon and to return early next morning.

45. With the co-operation of the Huleh concessionaires a hydrographic survey of the Huleh has in has been started and a number of stations established to measure systematically the flow in the Jordan river and its tributaries above and below the lake. I.Ii

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