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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



CORHESPONDENCE. 



CAUSES OF THE OHIO FLOODS. 

 Messrs. Editors : 



IN the November issue of your valuable 

 "Monthly" I have read with much 

 pleasure and profit Mr. S. W. Powell's arti- 

 cle entitled " Drowning the Torrent in Vege- 

 tation " ; and, in closing, he writes, " In 

 the recent Ohio floods the States which suf- 

 fered most — Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois — 

 were not those where most of the deforest- 

 ing was done which caused the floods." 



While I heartily agree with him that the 

 removal of our forests adds largely to the 

 destructiveness of the floods, yet I do not 

 agree with him that to that cause can be at- 

 tributed the greater portion of their de- 

 structiveness, and especially in Western 

 Pennsylvania and Ohio, where the larger 

 portion of the water cixme from that did the 

 damage in Cincinnati and the Ohio Valley 

 above. 



My theory is, that the increasing destruc- 

 tiveness of the floods in the Ohio and Mis- 

 sissippi Valleys is mainly due to the rapid 

 increase of tile-drainage throughout Penn- 

 sylvania and Ohio, and in small portions of 

 West Virginia, and the entire country 

 drained by the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers 

 and their tributaries. 



The facts are, that the increase of de- 

 structiveness of the floods in the Ohio Val- 

 ley has been in a ratio corresponding with 

 the increase of tile-drainage — as near as the 

 statistics obtainable concerning the latter 

 will show. 



It is not the writer's purpose to discuss 

 the matter at any length in this letter, but 

 merely to call the attention of the reader to 

 its probable truth or falsity. 



It is a well-known fact that a goodly 

 portion of the laud lying between the Alle- 

 ghany Mountains and a line drawn north 

 and south through Dakota, Kansas, and Ne- 

 braska, and bounded on the south by West 

 Virginia, Kentucky, and Arkansas, is more 

 or less of a swampy nature, retaining the 

 water as it falls — somewhat as a sponge 

 would — and has, until very recently, been 

 left in its natural state. 



The rapid increase of population of the 

 country has caused an increased demand 

 for land, and, taken in connection with the 

 improved machinery for making tile having 

 reduced the price of tile to a mere nominal 

 figure, has caused farmers to improve their 

 damp and swamp lands, as well as much up- 

 lying land, by tile-drainage. 



The effect of this has been to cause the 

 water from melting snow and rain-storms 

 to immediately discharge itself into the 

 water-courses ; whereas formerly from these 



swampy lands it ran ofiT very slowly, and 

 the same volume of water, that with tile- 

 drains is discharged now in twenty-four to 

 forty-eight hours, originally took from sev- 

 enty-two to one hundred and twenty hours 

 to discharge. 



The best statistics obtainable show that 

 tile-drainage has doubled since 1878, and 

 will undoubtedly continue to increase very 

 rapidly, because it has been found to prove 

 advantageous to all lands, and I am in- 

 formed that there is one farmer in this 

 State who has, during the year 1884, laid 

 upward of eleven miles of tile-drains upon 

 his farms. 



The writer predicts that but few years 

 will pass before several of the lower streets 

 of Cincinnati will be abandoned to the flood, 

 and that many towns along the valleys will 

 also be partially swept away and not rebuilt. 



The only things which will prevent this 

 will be slight rainfalls and very gradual 

 thawing of the snow, whenever the latter 

 falls to an extent to produce an amount of 

 water that will cause a flood. 



Farmers will not stop laying tile, because 

 they have found it to be a paying invest- 

 ment, rendering swamp-lands tillable, and 

 increasing the yield and sureness of crops 

 upon the upland, as well as rendering it 

 much more easy of cultivation. Consequent- 

 ly, it looks to us as though the dwellers in 

 the " bottoms " must go. 



Yours truly, James F. Slater. 



Highland Park, Illinois, November 22, 1884. 



DO ANIMALS FORETELL THE WEATHEE? 

 Messrs. Eklitors • 



It may be of interest to state that our 

 severe winter in this locality has been as 

 unexpected and unprepared for by our small 

 four - footed friends the musk - rats as by 

 the human population. For many years 

 our weather-wise people have based their 

 predictions of severe or open winters on 

 the manner in which the musk-rats built 

 their houses. Last fall's indications were 

 for a mild season, as the houses were ex- 

 ceptionally light and unsubstantial. Now 

 the poor rats are suffering for their lack 

 of foresight, and run about in the daytime, 

 seemingly bewildered and dazed by the ex- 

 treme cold, and fall easy victims to the small 

 boys, who capture them with little trouble. 



I have never been a believer in the su- 

 perior knowledge of animals in foretelling 

 weather, and this corroborates my ideas up- 

 on the subject. Respectfully, 



E. C. Mason. 

 Madison, Wisconsin, February 19, 1SS5. 



