Water Supply of South Africa, and Facilities for the Storage of it. By 

 JoH2f Croumbie Brown, LL.D., &c. Ediuburgh : Oliver and 

 Bojd. 



In a well got-ui3 and closely printed octavo volume of over 650 pages, 

 Dr J. C. Brown has brought together, by careful and assiduous compi- 

 lation from almost all available sources, an immense amount of valuable 

 information upon the evils attending the want of a proper knowledge 

 of the laws of nature, and the devastation worked in many countries by an 

 ignorant or wilful disregard of them. Considering the small amount of 

 philosophical inquiry which has been devoted to the all-important subject 

 of water supply and storage in most parts of the civilized world, we have 

 perused Dr. Brown's most elaborate and exhaustive book with much 

 interest and satisfaction. The author enters very fully into the literature 

 of the subject, and draws deductions from detailed meteorological obser- 

 vations made in all parts of the world, which, with his own observations 

 and experience, he applies in the most apt and convincing manner to the 

 solution of the important question for which the book has been specially 

 written, and justly ascribes the cause of the aridity of Cape Colony and 

 the other South African states to the wasteful destruction of trees and 

 herbage, forcibly contrasting the reckless indifference of the colonists to 

 the consequences of such wanton neglect of their forests, by comparing 

 it with the wonderful skill and energy displayed by the Chinese hydraulic 

 engineers, from a very remote era to the present time, in successfully com- 

 bating even a worse state of things in the Flowery Land. 



In the first part of the work the author enters fully into the philosophic 

 details of the humidity of the air and rainfall, and the conditions by which 

 they are influenced ; the theory of clouds, and their amount and peculiari- 

 ties at the Cape, with descriptions of the formation of the various kinds of 

 clouds, and the amount of moisture they represent ; the theory of winds 

 and thunderstorms, and their relation to the rainfall ; with tabulated 

 abstracts of numerous meteorological observations made at the Cape and in 

 various parts of the world, and a description of the best instruments used in 

 making these observations. Part II. describes in an exhaustive 

 manner all the sources from which are derived the present supply of water, 

 available for agricultural and other purposes at the Cape and in the adja- 

 cent regions ; with suggestions as to how it can be increased by the con- 

 servation and extension of forests, and more profitably utilized for man and 

 irrigation by storage. Part III. takes a minute survey of the general 



