372 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE, ETC. 
administration and adjudication can be collected only by the States or 
the Nation. Records collected by other agencies will be liable to lack of 
continuity, will not be generally available to the public, and will be open 
to suspicion as to reliability.’ 
Finally, it is to be noted that boundaries of districts in which the field work 
of the Surface Water Division is carried on, are made along State lines in 
order to simplify arrangements for State co-operation. In general, each 
district covers an area of one or more States. 
II. DoMINION OF CANADA. 
Observation of rainfall in Canada is the function of the Meteorological 
Service of Canada, which is a branch of the Department of Marine. ‘The 
Service maintains over 700 climatological and other stations making con- 
tinuous records of pressure, humidity, cloudiness, wind, precipitation and 
evaporation. Records are published monthly, and information is supplied 
free of charge. 
The measurement and recording of stream flow is undertaken by the 
Dominion Water Power and Hydrometric Bureau, which is a branch of 
the Department of the Interior and is carried on in each province by virtue 
of co-operative agreements between the Department and the respective 
provincial governments, under which the Department is responsible for 
the basic investigations with the requisite staff and equipment, while the 
provinces contribute to the cost of the field work but not on a uniform 
basis. The organisation has been developed over a period of years dating 
back to the end of last century, when stream measurement work was begun 
in Alberta in 1898. The scope of the hydrometric survey now includes 
every province in the Dominion, and the Bureau obtains and publishes all 
essential data on basic problems relating to stream regulation, flood control, 
navigation, water-power, irrigation, drainage, municipal water supply and 
other uses of water. The number of gauging stations throughout the 
Dominion at present in use is 451: others, having served their purposes, 
are discontinued. Many discharge measurements are made at points 
where no regular gauging station is established. There is a flood warning 
service to those districts where serious floods are liable to occur. 
Storage reservoirs to control stream flow have been constructed in 
many parts of Canada, principally to secure a regulated flow for water 
power development ; these structures have been mainly the result of private 
enterprise, but some have been built by the Dominion and provincial 
governments for various purposes. The policy of governmental assistance 
to water power development has been carried out on a large scale in the 
province of Quebec under the direction of the Quebec Streams Commission. 
III. SwiTzZERLAND. 
In Switzerland there are two independent organisations concerned with 
the collection of data relating to water. Rainfall and meteorological 
observations come under the jurisdiction of a Central Station of Meteorology 
at Zurich, while the collection of hydrometric data and the supervision of 
hydraulic development throughout the country fall within the domain of 
the Federal Water Service (Service fédéral des Eaux). 
Hydrometric observations include the levels of water in the lakes and 
important watercourses, estimation of discharges, the taking of profiles 
along and across certain watercourses, the soundings of lakes at certain 
points—in front of their outlets and of deltas, for example—the contouring 
of basins emptying into watercourses, etc. 
