198 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



lets — millions of small but inexhaustible streams. Sucli is the 

 bounty with which Heaven has supplied the earth with this 

 refreshing element. Man has come to know its use — he sees its 

 necessity, he sees that there is no vegetable development with- 

 out it — no fruit, no blossom, no stem, stalk or root, that without 

 it, every green and living thing of the field must die. Man, too, 

 by ingenuity and art, has come to apply the inanimate forces of 

 nature to such an extent, that his strength is as illimitable as the 

 boundless power of steam — equipped with iron charged with 

 the elements of nature, he tunnels rivers, spans them with gran- 

 ite arches big as the rainbow; he can excavate the earth, can 

 keep the sea out or shut it in, can ride the ocean and divide its 

 waves, can find his way among mountains of ice to the poles, 

 can bore the solid mountain as with a gimlet, and so walk 

 through them or over them as suits his convenience, can remove 

 hills, can make very large houses, and erect high monuments; 

 can beseige a city and destroy it in a night, can make a city in a 

 fortnight; he can pour o. flood of water upon a burning mass, and 

 thus make the elements overpower each other, he can lay under- 

 ground arteries of iron through a vast city, and fill them with 

 burning gas, that lights every dark hole, street and palace — can 

 divert and bring down to the metropolis whole rivers, and drive 

 them a thousand feet high, then make them fiow under the solid 

 pavements to every house, supplying every shop, laundry, 

 kitchen, dining-room and bedroom, with a living stream of water. 

 Yet he will sit down in despair and witness the destruction of the 

 fruits of his labor — the ruin of his fields, beholds the half-grown 

 grass, wither and die; he sees his entire fields scorching, crisping, 

 the ground baking, everything becoming dead and Aard, and with 

 all his art and strength he beholds the destruction going on, hears 

 and feels the cry for water, but acts as if he thought he were 

 powerless, as if all the water were in another world, and could 

 not so much as be prayed for, much less bought, at any price; 

 when, in fact, all he has to do is, first, think he ca?i, and then 

 turn around, take a cup, as it were, dip up some water and pour 

 it on to his thirsty fields — that is all; a very simple way, and 

 comparatively easy, withal, when we consider the advantages. 

 Water is the demand, and water it must he. 



Where is there a farmer that expects to obtain a crop of corn, 

 for instance, without several times weeding and hoeing it — he is 

 willing and expects to labor, and be at the expense of hoeing it, 



