90 FLOOD LANDS AND WATER SUPPLY. 



succession of pools. During prolonged wet 

 weather, the river again looks to its flood lands 

 for assistance. It becomes bank high; and 

 then the increasing flood water, instead of being 

 all hurried down stream to do tearing damage 

 to its own banks, and to those who dwell near 

 them or between them, has room to spread far 

 and wide over the meadows, swamps, and 

 reservoirs, which nature or man have either 

 provided or prepared. 



It is, in two words, held up; and can take 

 its own time for gradual evaporation, absorption 

 or dispersal. Although the whole country at 

 one time of writing may b~e deploring a water 

 famine, and grumbling at the insufficient storage 

 capacity of the various Water Companies* 

 reservoirs, one has only to look a few years 

 back to find letters in the press asking for more 

 adequate provision against the state of flood, 

 consequent upon a continuous wet winter. Here 

 then are the two extremes of flood and drought 

 both occurring within one quinquennial period, 

 and both likely to recur in future years, so 

 long as the flood lands, properly belonging to 

 the rivers are not strictly conserved, or even 

 restored to their original littoral ownership. 



When engineers plan the building of a bridge 

 in a tropical country, they set to work intelli- 

 gently to learn up the history of the river, 

 which they propose to span, for a period of 

 ten years or more; together with the average 

 rainfall in that river's upper districts. Even 

 after this precaution, they occasionally find that 



