A WORK ON THE CONSERVATION 

 OF WATER BY STORAGE 



By George Fillmore Swain, LL. D. 



Reviewed by Henry Sturgis Drinker, 

 President of Lehigh University and President of the American Forestry Association- 



THE CONSERVATION OF WATER BY STORAGE, by George Fillmore Swain, LL. D., 

 Gordon McKay Professor of Civil Engineering in Harvard University; Past President Amer- 

 ican Society of Civil Engineers; Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 384pp. 

 price, $3.00 



THIS very valuable work is made 

 up of a collection of studies 

 fitting one into another, so as 

 to present a harmonious whole, 

 being addresses delivered in the Chester 

 S. Lyman Lecture Series, in 1914, 

 before the Senior Class of the Sheffield 

 Scientific School of Yale University. 



It is the most masterly, comprehen- 

 sive and authoritative deliverance on 

 the general subject of the Conservation 

 of Water by Storage that has ever 

 appeared, and the chapters particularly 

 devoted to the water power question, 

 in which the author is a recognized 

 leading expert, are most timely in view 

 of the large amount of irrelevant talk 

 and political bias that has characterized 

 much of the public discussion of this 

 important economic question, not only 

 in the National Congress but also in 

 the National Conservation Congress. 



Dr. Swain's opening chapter on 

 "Conservation in General" is an illu- 

 minating summary highly instructive 

 and suggestive to those who have 

 already studied the subject and of the 

 greatest value to the man or woman 

 who is seeking light on this great 

 national question. 



This general discussion is followed in 

 Chapter II with a discussion of the 

 Conservation of Water and its relation 

 to the Conservation of other Resources. 

 What could be better or more succinct 

 than the following: 



"It is clear that there are three kinds 

 of natural resources, in the Conserva- 

 tion of which we are concerned 

 1. Those resources which are not re- 

 newable, and in which utilization, even 

 though without waste, necessarily des- 



818 



troys the store available for future 

 generations. Such are coal, oil, gas, 

 phosphates, and other mineral deposits. 

 Every particle of these resources which 

 is utilized diminishes by so much what 

 is left for our successors. 



2. "Those resources which are self- 

 renewing, though at a comparatively 

 slow rate, requiring considerable time 

 for a complete renewal. In this class 

 are included the forests, which may be 

 entirely cut down, but which will 

 ordinarily reproduce themselves in time. 

 In case of these resources, as in the 

 case of those in the first class, any 

 utilization diminishes the store available 

 for our immediate successors, although 

 distant future generations may be able 

 to replace the loss of those resources 

 which fall in the second class. 



3. "Water power falls in a different 

 class from either of the above, and 

 seems to occupy a place by itself, 

 having several peculiar characteristics. 

 In the first place, while resources of the 

 first two kinds, if not utilized, are in 

 general stored and preserved for the use 

 of future generations, water power, if 

 not utilized, is constantly wasting with 

 no good results to anybody. Neverthe- 

 less the water flows day by day and 

 year by year, and, speaking generally, 

 the power is perpetual. It is like a 

 free gift offered by the Creator to man, 

 which flows by him in a continuous 

 stream and may be had for the asking. 

 Water power, however, presents a 

 second peculiar characteristic in that 

 its conservation is a double conserva- 

 tion. The utilization of water power 

 for a purpose for which steam power, 

 or some other form requiring the use of 



