232 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
thirty-six sections. A three-inch rainfall has flooded the basin, and nothing of it 
now is seen save the wrecks it has made. A navigable river discharging 90,000 
cubic feet an hour, should have at least a year's time to disgorge it, 80,301,860 
cubic feet of water have rushed through that bed in ten or twelve days. The 
problem of handling this bulk is worthy of our greatest engineering talent. And 
the place for the most useful handling, and as well as the most successful, is the 
place where it falls. 
I St. Fifty acres of water surface to every township is none too much and 
is less than is now wasted. The avoiding of open drains and of washing are 
items of considerable importance to farmers. The delivery of clean water to the 
larger rivers is one of considerable importance to river men, and the interests of 
navigation. A constant flow in all streams v/hose minimum and maximum are 
known is greatly desired by railroads that have to provide bridges, and culverts, 
to roadmasters who have to construct bridges and approaches to them for these 
streams. If the basin of any of the minor rivers in north Missouri were so dealt 
with that every township could deliver in catch-ponds its rainfall so that land 
should be ready for the plow ten or twelve hours sooner than at present, and not 
deliver to the streams in bulk this vast amount of water, it would be a gainer. 
For instance. Grand River drains about 1,000 townships. It should be a 
navigable river, its bed is large enough from the mouth to the north line of the 
State. Its watershed provides water enough if the flow were regulated to afford 
a good pathway for steamboats of 100 tons displacement. If the entire basin 
were, under skillful engineering, drained and reservoirs so placed that every 
township should hold its catch at least sixty days before parting with the last of 
it, and then deliver no drift, it would add greatly to the safety, the utility and 
the beauty of that stream, and would save us the bar at its mouth in all probabil- 
ity. If all the streams in the vast basin under consideration were thus dealt with 
a great deal better success would attend our attempts to improve the navigation 
and protect the levees of the lower river. Now all this region is inhabited by 
intelligent and thrifty people, and' the organization that has the most to do 
with it is the town meeting or the county board, the units of our commonwealth. 
Of course the engineering problem would be different in every locality, but not 
insuperable in any. For the data are given so nearly that the exact character of 
the work can be determined, when place and area are known. The fall for the^ 
year here averages forty-two inches, on the upper Mississippi it is forty, what it 
will be for any area is readily determined. We cannot ride ten miles from this 
city without crossing some one of these beds of streams that are miserable gullies 
and washes. And in this land at least, " The Brook " of Tennyson is unknown. 
The beautiful streams of the lake country of Wisconsin are not found here. May 
they not be made ? Filling a narrow gorge or canon with a seething mass of 
water, mud and drift does not add to the useful drainage of a country, while 
the filling of a lake, or pond, or tarn with pure water and guiding its surplus 
away through dewy meadows or shady forest, a living stream, to join some other 
