5Q2 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



under its old charter or with a new one if it can get it. Its intentions 

 and organization are riot a negligible quantity in contemplating what 

 is going to happen to Niagara. Should it succeed in constructing its 

 canal and works it is not likely that with an unrestricted charter the 

 company will consume less than 10,000 cubic feet of water per second, 

 and if we assume this as a fair expression of its mean consumption we 

 must increase the mortgage on the Niagara waters by this amount. It 

 then becomes 58,400 cubic feet per second. 



These are then the demands upon the river which are actually in 

 sight. 



In the seventh annual report of the Commissioners of the Queen 

 Victoria Niagara Falls Park (1903), Mr. Isham Kandolph, of Chicago, 

 advisory engineer for the commissioners, makes, at the request of the 

 board, a report on the ' Further Development of the Niagara River 

 for Power Purposes,' in which he suggests sites for four additional 

 companies to consume in total 29,996 cubic feet of water per second. 

 We may better construe this proposed abstraction as operations under 

 consideration rather than merely as work suggested. If we add the 

 amount to our last figure the result, 88,396 cubic feet per second, 

 leaves the entire American channel as dry as bone. 



Such is the situation. We are out in the open with these figures. 

 They are the figures of the engineers themselves. The counter-argu- 

 ment to these statements has been, so far as the writer's experience 

 goes, either incorrect premises or a rather bored smile. Putting aside 

 entirely the merely proposed developments and considering only those 

 actualty in process we see how closely we are brought to the dead line 

 for the American cataract. 



What are we going to do about it ? A small, very small propor- • 

 tion of the community in New York and Ontario is content to let 

 the process continue, even to the extinction of Niagara. This element 

 of these communities is largely directly or indirectly concerned with 

 the industrial develojmients there. Outside the boundaries of these 

 trustee governments this percentage is greatly less. In the country 

 as a whole, speaking for the general intelligent public, the opposition 

 to this procedure seems so overwhelming as to be practically unanimous. 

 New York long ago recognized the necessity of conserving such of 

 these natural beauties as have fallen to her share and the state reserva- 

 tion at Niagara is one of the most beautiful of parks, lamentably small 

 in view of the present encroachment, but upon it she has spent some 

 millions of dollars. The Province of Ontario joined hands in this 

 endeavor and the Queen Victoria Park was once and will be again a 

 beautiful spot, all the more beautiful, the commissioners think, after 

 the installment of the power companies is complete. 



