152 Failure of the Yan Yean Reservoir. 
Australian sun. It does seem extraordinary, therefore, with 
so little to lose, that we should be solicitous, at an immense 
sacrifice of money, to provide an evaporating basin in the 
vicinity of the river, sufficiently large to swallow up nine- 
tenths of the small supply which nature has thus provided for 
our use. 
_ I confess to have some impatience for the publication of 
the full report of the Committee, in order to learn what they 
recommend to be done with this evaporating basin. A few 
more such basins, of a size proportioned to our larger rivers, 
would effectually secure the loss of all our river water, and 
convert this beautiful province of Australia Felix into an 
Australian desert. : 
It may be said that, in commenting upon the opmions o 
the two civil engineers who form the Committee, it is very 
unlikely that I should be right, as such questions belong to 
engineering, and are therefore strictly professional. An 
attentive consideration of this paper, however, will show that 
there are no questions involved which any person of ordinary 
education may not clearly understand and appreciate ; and 
therefore, simply as a member of the Philosophical Society, 
it is perfectly competent for me to call in question any novel 
methods of investigation adopted by the Committee, and to 
say whether, in my opinion, these are legitimate and scientific, 
or the reverse. 
But the great and important points upon which the success 
or failure of the Yan Yean scheme depends do not belong 
more to the province of the civil engineer than to the medical 
profession. 
I have heard of civil engineers bridging the Menai Straits 
with a stupendous tube of iron, and tunnelling the river 
Thames, and building a leviathan steam ship of 25,000 tons, 
to perform the voyage to Australia in thirty days ; and if the 
Goulburn River and the King Parrot Creek are to be brought 
through granite mountains into the Yan Yean reservoir there 
are still higher and greater laurels in store for our colonial 
engineers. But Iam not aware of any civil engineer who 
has published original researches on the subject of Heat and 
Evaporation. Hitherto this department of science has been 
chiefly cultivated by members of the medical profession. 
I never heard of any civil engineer’ who had published 
original investigations on Meteorology. This subject also 
owes more to the medical profession than to the civil 
engineer. 
