258 TRANS. ST. LOUIS ACAD. SCIENCE. 



I think that want is being already felt. Understand me, I do not 

 predict that this country will become a barren waste through lack 

 of rain, but that we will be certain to sufter more and more each 

 year from drouths during the summer months, if we continue to 

 advocate the indiscriminate drainage of our ponds and lakes. 



Attention has been directed to the destruction of the forest trees 

 as the main cause, whereas I am convinced it is due to the fact 

 that we have been hard at work for years bleeding the soil to 

 deaths as it were ; for surely water, in one sense, is soil in mo- 

 tion. The ponds and lakes are as essential to the vegetable as 

 they are to the animal kingdom : in the first case, it is indirectly 

 through the medium of the atmosphere, and is deposited as rain 

 on the earth, where it is absorbed and enters the general circula- 

 tion ; in the other, it is taken directly into the system. These 

 reserve waters are as essential to the agricultural world as bank 

 reserves are to the financial. To compensate for the loss of these 

 natural water-fountains we are obliged to furnish our animals 

 with water from deep springs (wells) ; but this cannot be done 

 for the vegetable kingdom, hence it suffers. In proof of what I 

 have said, I refer the reader to the more recent results obtained 

 in the Isthmus of Suez, as witnessed by M. Lesseps, the dis- 

 tinguished engineer of the Suez canal, and published as one of 

 the results of that stupendous work. If I remember rightly, he 

 says : " Clouds came up accompanied by thunder and lightning, 

 and rain fell in showers for some distance each side of the canal, 

 where it had never been known to rain before, and greatly to the 

 terror of the natives." Again, in the report made to the French 

 Government by the oflScers in charge of the artesian wells sunk 

 in the desert, one of the results obtained by these artificial springs 

 was "a free growth of grass, vegetables, trees, and even seeds of 

 plants that had lain dormant in the soil probably for ages, and 

 simply required moisture to awaken them to life and splendor. 

 Even here in these artificial oases we find they are blessed with 

 occasional showers." 



In regard to our own arid plains, and the efforts being made by 

 the General and State Governments to overcome this great obsta- 

 cle to their cultivation, I think too much importance is attached 

 to the supposed influence of trees, although I admit they they are 

 valuable, and really necessary as wind-breaks, fuel, etc. ; but by 



