748 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ditions as cause heavy snows to be melted suddenly, together 

 with the absence of forests which tend to absorb moisture and to 

 give it out but slowly, produce disastrous floods, such as have so 

 frequently occurred. That there is any effectual remedy for the 

 floods can scarcely be maintained ; that their violence can be miti- 

 gated, the adherents of reforesting devoutly believe ; and that 

 the great dearth of water can be largely prevented by allowing 

 the hills to become clothed again with forests, and the springs 

 give out their stores perennially instead of drying up in seasons 

 of drought, all must admit. But the problems of a great river are 

 not worked out in a few years, any more than its own history has 

 been. Time is necessary for all things. We firmly believe that 

 man will in the end find a cure for the evils of drought and flood 

 to which the mighty Ohio has been subject since civilized man 

 has planted himself upon her hilly shores. 







STREET-CLEANING IN LARGE CITIES. 



By General EMMONS CLAEK. 



ALTHOUGH it is an unquestionable fact that cleanliness of 

 the streets is necessary to the health and comfort of the 

 people, few, if any, of the large American cities have as yet satis- 

 factorily accomplished this important sanitary object. European 

 cities have generally been more successful in this particular, and 

 their success is due mainly to their earlier attention to sanitary 

 subjects, to their more arbitrary methods of enforcing police and 

 sanitary regulations, and to the comparative absence of political 

 and personal influences in their municipal governments. A dif- 

 ference is noticeable in the cleanliness of the streets of American 

 cities, which may be attributed to the great disparity in the char- 

 acter and condition of their population, and the variety of plans 

 upon which the streets are laid out, and the building blocks or 

 squares are constructed. In those cities and parts of cities where 

 the people of the laboring class and the poor are crowded in tene- 

 ment-houses, and where a considerable part of the population is 

 foreign-born and from countries where personal and public clean- 

 liness have not been enforced by proper police regulations, it is 

 no trifling task to secure cleanliness of the streets ; but this desir- 

 able result is obtainable with comparative ease in those cities 

 whose founders provided lanes or alleys in the rear of all dwell- 

 ings, through which house refuse can be removed without any 

 use of the public streets except for its transportation in carts to 

 places of deposit. 



New York, from its insular position, from its large foreign- 



