58 Kansas Academy of Science. 



APPLICATION. 



To apply the general principles already enumerated and to bring 

 about by a variety of coercion a set of conditions which will in a 

 measure decrease the extent of floods, and thereby lessen the de- 

 struction of life and property in the river valleys during flood pe- 

 riods, is the end sought by all investigations and all improvements 

 undertaken, as outlined earlier in this paper. The end sought by 

 ditt'erent parties is the same, and there should be a unanimity and 

 cooperation in our efforts. 



Floods are caused primarily by excessive and irregular rainfall, 

 a statement so simple that few people realize its importance. Were 

 our annual precipitation uniform week by week and month by 

 month the river channels now on the face of the earth probably are 

 abundantly large to carry all the precipitation back to the ocean 

 without overflowing the banks of a single stream. But rainfall is 

 most irregular, and combinations of this irregularity are almost in- 

 finitely variable. Could our heavy rains come all at once over the 

 entire drainage area of a stream so that they would produce the 

 maximum efl^ect our floods would be many times more disastrous 

 than they are. For example, throughout the Mississippi valley, it 

 is by no means unusual for as much as four inches of rain to fall 

 within a period of forty-eight hours and in many places a rain of 

 two or three inches sometimes falls within a period of one hour. 

 Who can calculate the results should we have a precipitation of 

 four inches throughout the entire Mississippi river drainage area 

 within the same period of forty-eight hours ? The floods would so 

 far exceed anything that has ever been known by man that we can 

 hardly conceive of the disaster which would follow. But, fortunately 

 for mankind, the rainfalls are irregular, and during the short period 

 of the white man's inhabitance of the Mississippi valley no instance 

 has been known when all of the great tributaries of the Mississippi 

 river were at their highest flood at the same time. 



Instead of four inches of rain, sometimes we have six, or eight, 

 or ten, or even more, over small areas within a very short time. 

 One extreme case came under my observation during the past sum- 

 mer. A relatively small area in northeastern Kansas lying north of 

 the Kansas river and principally east of the Blue river received a 

 total precipitation of forty-five inches within a period of five months, 

 nearly all of which came within two months, and in some instances 

 from four to six inches came within as many hours. The little 

 town of Frankfort, in Marshall county, is situated on a small stream, 

 less than two miles from its source, and the thought of danger from 



