26 THE BOOK OF FORESTRY 



Nature has been no less generous regarding our water 

 supply. For over the entire country the average rainfall 

 amounts to thirty inches per year, an amount which 

 if evenly distributed would be entirely sufficient for our 

 needs. Combining the effects of our climate which is 

 most favorable to the land and water our country is 

 capable of producing practically any foodstuff common 

 to the temperate zone. The total rainfall amounts to 

 215,000,000,000,000 cubic feet and is equal in bulk to 

 ten Mississippi rivers. 



The uses which water serves are countless. Plant 

 and animal life could not do without it and these values 

 of course are taken for granted. The part water plays 

 in irrigation projects, in furnishing power, in filling 

 streams and canals to provide cheap transportation are 

 some of the other uses which water serves. Of the water 

 which is now flowing idly to the sea, an authority states 

 that were it put upon the arid land we possess it would 

 yield foodstuffs to feed 50,000,000 people. The Re- 

 clamation Service has brought large tracts of land 

 formerly arid to a productive state and although alto- 

 gether only 14,000,000 acres out of the 40,000,000 acres 

 in the country at large which can be irrigated are 

 "under the ditch" the work is proceeding steadily. The 

 land capable of irrigation when supplied with water 

 will support 20,000,000 people on account of its great 

 fertility. Our total water supply is ample. It is merely 

 a question of getting it to the land which needs it. 



While water is a splendid servant it is a bad master. 

 The damage done each year by erosion (two hundred 

 square miles of fertile land is laid desolate each year) 

 and floods is enormous. The annual damage inflicted 

 by floods is now in the neighborhood of one-quarter 

 billion dollars, five times as much as it was ten years 



